Heavy vehicle production under attention

By Décio Costa | 4/10/23 | Translated by Jorge Meditsch

The first quarter of the year ended with a challenge to adequate heavy vehicle production to meet the market’s demand. Compared to the first trimester of 2022, truck production fell by 28.8% to 24.4 thousand units, and buses by 29,6%, with little more than four thousand chassis assembled.

The steep fall is a solid motive for concern. But when detailed, the numbers show a distance between produced and sold figures that complicates the scenario even more. According to Anfavea, 93.6% of the 28.6 thousand trucks sold in the first trimester were produced last year. In the bus segment, 99.5% of the chassis sold were made in 2022.

“If at the end of last year it was difficult to know if there were anticipated purchases before Proconve’s change after January 1, it is now clear that the market has absorbed most of what was in stock”, said Gustavo Bonini, Anfavea’s vice president.

Bonini sees as natural the adequation right after the environmental regulations change, as happened in previous situations. Nevertheless, this time it seems too big. “Very few of what was produced this year of the new Euro 6 generation reached the market, just 6.4% of trucks and 0.5% of bus chassis. Those indexes should be between 20% and 30%. The great concern is about the production over the next few months.”

Collective vacations and the second shift cancelation, as Mercedes-Benz and Scania announced, show the challenge to be faced.

In March, truck and bus production grew over February. In the first segment, there was a 51.7% increase to 12.3 thousand units and in the second, 53.6% to 1.9 thousand chassis. Nonetheless, the volumes were smaller than in the same month last year, with respectively less 8.9% (13.5 thousand units) and 19.1% (2.4 thousand). It is also important to consider that the most critical period of components shortage happened in the first quarter of last year.