More medium-heavy-duty trucks will be sold in 2014

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Mountain View, Calif. – Global sales of medium-heavy-duty trucks are expected to be up in 2014.

Research company Frost & Sulllivan is predicting there will be 2.87 million medium-heavy-duty trucks purchased this year throughout the entire world. This figure represents a 3.7 percent increase from 2013.

In North America projections are for sales to exceed 140,000 units in 2014. In comparison Frost & Sullivan expects Class 8 truck sales should total 258,000 vehicles.

Globally, the ratio of 1.7:1 of heavy-duty vs. medium-heavy-duty truck sales is expected to remain unchanged fro 2013.

Beyond the numbers, there are a number of changes to the market and trends Frost & Sullivan expects to see. These include:

  • Volvo having higher sales than Daimler for the first time in history, which could result in the “unleashing of a massive competitor force from the German OEM that had prided itself as the world’s biggest truck manufacturer.”
  • Global engine platforms “truly taking flight”.
  • “A steady flow of new truck platform/model introductions that includes at least 15 new truck models.”

In the report, entitled Overview of the Global Medium-Heavy Duty Truck Market in 2014, the company stresses the growing importance of connectivity technologies, writing, “these technologies will not only catalyze mobile resource management, but also usher vehicle-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to-vehicle and related communications aimed at enhancing vehicle uptime, driver satisfaction, and fleet efficiency and safety.”

The report also looks at use types of fuel sources being employed. It acknowledges the continued dominance of diesel, which is being used in 97% of all medium-heavy-duty trucks, but says natural gas adoption is slowly happening. In 2014, it expects the alternative fuel to power 0.8% of the trucks sold.

One development noted by the report is the move to changing engine sizes as “heavy-duty diesel engines in markets such as Europe and North America will feature shrinking displacement, while heavy-duty engines in markets such as China, India, Russia and Brazil will get bigger than what they used to be.”

Frost and Sullivan also expects there to be a growing demand for used trucks, and an increased involvement by OEMs in the second-hand market.

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