After a disastrous year, lorry makers are moving up a gear

LIKE a small furry animal in the fast lane of a motorway, the lorry industry suffered a severe pounding in 2009. A decline in worldwide heavy-lorry sales of some 50% was a harsh reminder that this is a business that grows with the sale and transport of goods and then suffers disproportionately when recession strikes. But at the industry’s biggest trade show in Hanover in September the truckers put their boots back on the throttle.

Daimler, the world’s biggest lorry maker, said that sales from January to August were up by 33% over the previous year and that orders had leapt by 65%. It expects to make a profit of €1 billion ($1.4 billion) compared with a similar loss in 2009. MAN, another German firm, reckons that it will sell some 120,000 vehicles in 2010, three times what it sold last year. Sweden’s Volvo also reported a 62% increase in sales in August compared with 2009. Daimler is now confidently predicting that lorry sales will grow by more than half by 2015 to some 3m vehicles. But such was the severity of the crash the industry suffered in 2009 that global sales will still be only two-thirds of what they were in 2006. …