European trailer market: accelerating recovery from the COVID-19 impact
During the first half of this year, the industry was in doubt in how far the trailermarket would recover from the pandemic. However, we were positively surprised during this summer. According to CLEAR and ING Bank’s reports, we are expected a faster and accelerating recovery than what was envisaged.
With the pandemic restrictions, manufacturers reduced capacity. However, as vaccination programmes were accelerated, economies throughout Europe recovered faster in the past months. Therefore, economies could reopen, which is now leading to more trailer orders and a rise of used trailers’ prices.
Higher delivery times lead to a higher used trailers demand
Because of the pandemic, suppliers were not able to replenish their stocks for the future. It has also impact the raw material industry: for instance, aluminium had become more expensive than steel. Therefore, when demand rose again, there were not enough parts to keep the pace as dictated by suddenly growing demand.
With this higher delivery times of new trailers, the demand for used trailers is on the rise. Moreover, with the shortage of parts, hauliers turned to the second hand market and to rental companies to fulfill their needs.
Accelerating recovery
The market was highly impacted by the pandemic. According to CLEAR forecasts, 3 million new trailers were sold in 2018. (source: CLEAR report). However, because of the pandemic, trailer production fell by a third in 2020 compared to 2018, while registrations fell by a fifth. Nevertheless this situation is slowly improving, as the number of newly ordered trailers keeps rising.
In the years ahead of us, the European trailer fleet will grow moderately.
ING Bank is a bit more cautious. It expects that after an eight percent market recovery this year, growth of sales will accelerate more in 2022. However, specific percentages are not given. (source: ING Bank report)
From crisis to boom
On the assumption that further new waves of COVID-19 are kept under control, CLEAR envisages 9.8% growth of trailer demand in 2021.
Also, it has to be noted that the market has turned from crisis into a boom in just three months, something which was never seen before.
Another exceptional thing is that the market growth seems to be driven by the availability of parts. The shortage of chips and raw materials has led to all sorts of shortages leading to higher prices. This is also the case in the truck-industry at present. Therefore, a reliable forecast is extremely difficult right now.
Keep your fleet moving with TIP
Headquartered in Amsterdam, TIP is one of the leading providers of both equipment and services within Europe and Canada. TIP specializes in providing the transportation and logistics sector with leasing, rental, maintenance, and repairs through a wide selection of trailer equipment.
Whether you are already a TIP customer or not, you can benefit from our maintenance and repair expertise in all our workshops (more than 110).
We also offer a wide range of high quality 2nd-hand trailers and trucks across Europe and Canada.
For more information about the availability of our trailers, please contact ust, or visit our website for TIP used trailers and trucks.
