*Prognosis for the 2026-28 period is for new record sales levels
Trailer market experts CLEAR International has just issued its October 2024 forecast for the East European Heavy Trailer Market.
In 2023 the Russian government moved the country onto a war footing. This included buying significant quantities of transport assets including heavy goods trailers. As a result the Russian trailer market grew by 57%. This effect has continued into 2024 with another increase of 32% forecast. However, for the remainder of the forecast period, Russian trailer demand will revert to more normal levels.
With the exception of Russia, most other East European countries will see a fall in trailer demand in 2024. This will more than offset the Russia effect so that the overall demand for trailers in the region will fall by 8%. In particular, the region’s largest markets, such as Poland, Türkiye and Lithuania will see substantial falls in trailer registrations in 2024.
The reasons for this weakness are tolerably obvious: The war in Ukraine has led to a fall in business confidence which has manifested itself as a lack of willingness to invest in new transport equipment such as trailers and trucks.
Also, 2023 had record demand for new trailers with the East European market exceeding 120,000 units for the first time. Türkiye had sensational levels of trailer sales. Arguably there are now plenty of new trailers in the regional fleet.
Another dampening factor is that since 2022q4 the demand for road transport in Eastern Europe (measured in tonne-km) has stopped growing. It has been increasing in a linear fashion for the last twenty years, but even Poland, which has the highest road transport demand in Europe, had a 2.7% fall in demand. In the whole of Europe this was only exceeded by Germany which had a fall of 5.8%.
The outlook for 2025 is for a similar trailer demand level to that of 2024. Although thirteen of the fifteen countries in the region will see some growth, Türkiye and Russia will still be settling back to a normal level of demand from the very high levels of 2023/24. Falls in these two countries will almost balance the limited increases in the other smaller markets.
Gary Beecroft, director of CLEAR International commented: “Trailer market sales for 2024/25 will be slightly lower than predicted in the March 2024 forecast report, but subsequent years will remain close to the expected trajectory, eventually exceeding the 2023 record level.”
This report outlines when, where and how quickly the trailer market will develop through to 2028.