Canada Class 4-8 Truck Sales Fall in December

December sales of medium- and heavy-duty trucks in Canada fell 17.0% from like-2014, the greatest decline of the year, with 3,368 delivered.

Class 8 orders fell 19.2% to 2,327 units.  Only Volvo and Mack posted gains, up a combined 17.4%. Kenworth and Peterbilt lost the most, both down 41.5%. Overall for the year, sales were up 1.9% to 29,581 units from last year’s 29,043.

December Class 7 plummeted 24.8% with 260 deliveries. Class leader Hino posted a 71.3% gain on year-ago, but the next three highest sellers recorded losses of over 30%. For full-2015, Class 7 deliveries totaled 4,792, up 13.2%.

Sales of Class 6 slipped 2.0% with 126 units in December. Increases by International (+116.0%) and Peterbilt (+8.7%) were able to offset losses from Freightliner and Hino, down 24.0% and 9.6%, respectively. This was the only weight class with a 2015 total below prior-year, falling 10.5% to 1,292 deliveries.

Class 5 sales totaled 527 units in the month, down 8.6%. Most manufacturers posted double-digit declines, but top-selling Ford posted a 9.3% gain. Isuzu boosted its sales 80.4%, nearly doubling share from 7.3% to 14.4%. The January-December tally hit an all-time high at 6,661 vehicles, 3.8% better than like-2014.

Class 4 was almost flat with year-ago, with a 0.4% downtick to 128 units. A 16.1% gain by Ford could not outweigh strong declines by the low-volume manufacturers. For the year, sales were up 12.7% to 1,536.

Overall sales of medium- and heavy-duty trucks in 2015 rose 3.2%, to 43,862 units, compared with 42,496 in 2014.

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