What do the end-of-year truck registration statistics tell us about suppliers' strengths and weaknesses and about market trends? This year the numbers demand even more careful interpretation than usual, as Tim Blakemore discovered.rnIf ever there was a year in which that well-worn cliche about three kinds of lies (lies, damned lies and statistics) was at home among UK truck registration statistics, 2008 surely would seem to be it. That is not to suggest that last year's figures, collated as always by The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), are factually inaccurate or designed to be deliberately misleading in any way, but simply by way of a succinct explanation for what looks like a paradox. On the one hand we have the Commercial Vehicle Show Partnership (of which SOE IRTE is a member, together with the SMMT and the Road Haulage Association) last month taking the decision to cancel the 2009 CV Show (due to be held in April at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre) for the first time in the event's nine-year history. The cancellation seemed almost inevitable from late last year following a string of stand-booking cancellations by truck and van manufacturers (Transport Engineer December 2008). On the other hand we have full-year truck registration statistics published last month by the SMMT revealing that the UK's 3.5-tonnes-plus truck market for 2008 was "the second highest market since 1989", in the words of Stuart Hunt. Until he retires next month (see page 31) Mr Hunt is managing director of Daf Trucks Ltd the top-sellingrntruck-maker in the UK and, by the way, one of the first manufacturers to withdraw from the 2009 show late last year when it became evident that the unprecedented global financial mayhem combined with the UK's deepening recession was wreaking havoc on the order books of all commercial vehicle maufacturers and their suppliers.
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