The heavy commercial vehicle segment has reported a growth of five per cent in the first two months of this fiscal, boosting recovery hopes further in the commercial vehicle (CV) space.
Though CV volumes as a whole remain in the negative territory, sales of heavy trucks in the above 16-tonne category have grown by 4.8 per cent at 15,988 units during April-May 2014.
Categories such as 25-tonne and above tractor trailers and above 35-tonne trucks have recorded strong growth.
The trend seems to be signalling that the medium and heavy commercial vehicle industry is just awaiting the pick-up in mining and infrastructure activities to move into the growth trajectory as industry now firmly believes that negative demand cycle has bottomed out.
Shyam Maller, Senior Vice-President – Sales and Marketing, VE Commercial Vehicle, said: “Some of the positive signals included that large fleet operators started replacing their old trucks with new ones, some fleet operators with medium and heavy trucks were getting new contracts and repayments to financiers have started happening in the heavy segment.
Srivats Ram, Managing Director, Wheels India, a major CV parts maker, also admitted that there were many indicators that the demand cycle had bottomed out. “However, for the momentum in growth, road development and bottlenecks in infrastructure have to be removed.
The indication that things are better comes from the fact that there seems to an increase in freight rates, on long term annual contracts, for the truck operators that has triggered fresh purchases
Multi-axle trailers“Fleet owners are now adding multi-axle trailers to their fleet as their corporate clients are insisting on providing young-age fleet as a pre-condition to awarding 3-4 years’ contracts. There is an optimism that truckers have started exploring and planning fleet replacement as they hope infra activity will resume,” according to Surjit Arora of Prabhudas Lilladher.
