Non-franchised commercial vehicle dealers report that the market has slowed, with a significant decline in retail activity over the past few months.

Coinciding with the traditional summer slowdown, dealers are taking a further knock from an uncertain economic outlook that has hit customer confidence.  

The worst potential outcome is for prices to be driven ever lower as a growing number of vans are offered to a customer base that is shrinking, according to the experts behind Glass’s Guide to Used Commercial Vehicles.  

“Providing volumes do not grow too much in a sluggish marketplace, and with the hope that by the start of winter the worst of the country’s economic problems are in remission, things could look more promising by spring 2009,” suggests George Alexander, Chief Commercial Vehicle Editor at EurotaxGlass’s.  

Analysis shows that prices are in retreat across all light commercial vehicle sectors, after many months of stability when prices held firm.  As yet, this weakness is mostly restricted to those less well-presented vans with high mileage or damage.  Elsewhere, falls in value represent little more than standard monthly movements driven by age and wear and tear.

Manheim Auctions’ latest Commercial Vehicle Market Bulletin reports an emerging trend of a seasonally disproportionate increase in the average age of used vans.