As a part of their recent briefing, Hino presented some of the figures surrounding their sales across 2024, looking back on how the market has developed over the past four years since the advent of the pandemic.
Looking at figures from October 2024, Hino had sold 4,193 trucks in Australia in the year to date, which was tracking extremely similarly to the 2023 figures.
While there was a boom in sales immediately following the pandemic, this is now starting to level out.
“We’ve certainly seen some softening of the market in the past six months after being on a strong run,” Hino Australia president and CEO Richard Emery says.
“That’s manifesting itself in the light segment, and at the discretionary level. Tradies, retail, mum and dad businesses that may have a ute and a handful of trucks.
“At the corporate level, they’re still consistent and robust. The market’s been running pretty strong post-COVID. It’s getting potentially back to a ‘normal’ level of units sold.
“There was an acceleration in 2017-18, settled back down in COVID, but then past 2020 there was a bit of catch-up on the latent demand.”
Richard believes that many truck OEMs have almost hit a limit on how quickly they can get trucks out to customers with the supply challenges that the pandemic provided.
This is especially in consideration with the change in what Hino can now produce with Euro 6 emissions in mind. There’s an expectation for a drop off for sales from late 2025 until production on the 500 Series can continue.
“Most of us found it hard to keep up from a supply perspective,” Richard says.
“The industry has held the number back across 2022-23 because of those supply issues. Some of it is structural issues, some is supply, and some is the market cutting back a little bit.
“We think the market is banging up against a glass ceiling due a number of things including lack of supply, getting bodies built, shipping out of Japan and other markets as well. We are bullish about the market out to 2030.
“We believe OEMs are working to control and increase capacity to finish products, and that will break through that ceiling. We’re basing our supply on getting a truck out in 90 days, but that’s blown down to 120 days. Some customers are waiting for bodies to be built for six to nine months.”
Richard sees an advantage for Hino in its parts and distribution centre.
When they aren’t able to produce as many new trucks for customers across 2025 and 2026, this will continue to offer a servicing option for customers with older fleets.
“Although we’ve talked about our investment in our parts and distribution centre in numerous occasions, we can’t stress how much it has impacted our businesses,” Richard says.
“It has doubled our capacity for our parts business. When supply of new vehicles was under pressure, clients were keeping their old trucks longer. We did see a surge in maintenance across COVID.”
Building bodies
One of the challenges that Hino has faced in recent years which has drawn out production times is delays in the supply of bodies.
While some are built out of Hino’s home country of Japan in factories with full production lines, much of the Australian body building industry is kept relatively local and small-scale.
Like many other OEMs, Hino is beholden to the capacity these body builders are able to supply.
“Our body building industry in Australia is majority mum and dad businesses,” Richard says.
“We build our tippers out of Kyoto in Japan. It is a production line. We don’t have that scale here. When we spoke to our bodybuilders, they said they didn’t want to commit to a bigger shed and they didn’t have staff.
“30 per cent of our supply line in Australia is already over an 120 day wait. It is certainly a structural issue that we have to work on. It’s in our interest, our dealer’s interest and our customer’s interest to get right.”
What is then done locally comes with significant logistical challenges.
“We have a heap of distribution challenges,” Hino Australia Manager of Product Strategy Daniel Petrovski says.
“We do plenty of alloy trays, but they’re all coming out of Sydney. We can’t do a deal with three different bodybuilders in three different states.
“There’s a balance of 120 days vs 60 days, what’s the cost against the freight task and the quality and warranty? Standard warranty has gone from three to five years, and we have the body included.”
With the greater production of the Hybrid Electric, Hino is also eyeing off the challenges that brings in the workshop.
Like other areas of the industry, workshop mechanics, and specifically those with expertise in working on electric vehicles, are in high demand.
“There’s a lot of pressure on workshop guys,” Richard says.
“It is on two fronts: work rate capacity, and qualified staff. We can’t get enough welders and skilled workers in the industry off the back of COVID.
“We’re working with dealers to get more apprenticeships. It’s a struggle to take on the truck industry as an apprenticeship. We’re also working with our dealers on bringing in technicians from the Philippines, South Africa and the UK.
“We want to build a really strong foundation at the back of our business. Building that robust ecosystem for Hino in Australia is what we’re focusing on at the moment.”
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