EU Heavy Truck Sales
In the US, heavy truck sales have proved a remarkably fine and prescient early cyclical indicator, not only being a good investment spending signal, but also being highly sensitive to broader commercial demand.
But they are not closely followed in Europe. I've decided to include them in my European shocks & surprises universe. And first time out, in December, we hit something that might be cyclically useful: EU heavy truck sales rose 23.5% yoy in December, with a monthly movt which was 2.6SDs above historic seasonal trends. That looks highly positive.
The details are not what I'd expect, or can easily explain. For the major economies, Germany was up 18% yoy and Italy up 15.7%, but France was up only 2.3% and Spain only 5.9%. But what really made the difference was a surge in registrations in Eastern Europe: Poland was up 69.4% yoy, Czech Republic was up 22.2% and Lithuania was up 146%. Small countries, small economies? Not really. Poland accounted for 16% of the EU's Dec heavy truck registrations, and was the third largest buyer after Germany and France. As for Czech and Lithuania, together they accounted for 7.3% of registrations. So take these Eastern Europe 3, and they accounted for just under a quarter of all the EUs heavy truck sales.
I'm not sure why its happening, but such heavy capital spending certainly suggests something is stirring either in Eastern Europe, or in their near trading partners. We'll keep watching.
