Recession — what recession?
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ILI 'ye been poring over some back issues of
CM and coming across various pronouncements by leading members of the transport industry, proved in retrospect to be, let us say, somewhat optimistic.
Step forward David Gill of Leyland Daf. In January this year: he told journalists that truck registrations for 1992 could be 25% higher than the 32,184 recorded last year. This looks like being a little out.
The British Association of Removers was full of hope in April 1991: "The first-time mover is coming back," it enthused.
Pickfords, the nation's largest removals operator, added: "the slide has
stopped ... the corner has been turned". House prices and sales throughout the country have duly plummeted.
Lance Anderson, former managing director of parcels company Nexday, which crashed two months ago, leaving many franchisees in the lurch, excelled when he told CM in November: "Since we acquired Nexday in August, it has gone from strength to strength."
However, before you accuse me of having 20-20 hindsight, let me throw my hat into the ring with some of my own predictions. No doubt some of you will enjoy throwing them back at me in a year or two's time: 0 Truck sales will begin to grow month on month, with perhaps the odd hiccup, but 1992 sales will be 5% down on 1991.
El At least one other truck manufacturer will be out of business by next summer, but a Japanese producer will be on the verge of taking the plunge into the UK market.
CI Up to 20 of Britain's top medium-size hauliers will have been snapped up by ambitious Dutch, French and German transport groups by the end of 1993.