Vans Dominate Buying Interest for Commercial Dealers

Service bodies and vans accounted for the most searches in 2018 on Work Truck Solutions' online platform, which also saw a huge increase in interest around commercial vehicles, the online portal has announced.

More than 1 million searches were completed on the company's platform in 2018, which was a better than 50% year-over-year volume increase. The findings came in Work Truck Solutions' sixth annual report on search data for commercial body types. The company provides listings of commercial vehicles for more than 900 dealers.

Service bodies accounted for 17.3% of the total searches, mirroring their popularity in the commercial market. Van searches also remained reliably high. In both 2018 and 2017, all van searches (including cutaways, empty cargo vans, and a variety of upfitted vans) accounted for about 35% of all searches.

Other popular individual vehicle types included platform body (10.4%), dump body (7.6%), and contractor body (3.65%).

"The top 10 body types tracked in 2017 were similar to 2018 and grew proportionately to the overall increase in searches," said Kathryn Schifferle, CEO of Work Truck Solutions. "This confirms that overall market demand is stable and reliable. In 2018 however, we saw significant increases in rollbacks (300%) and chippers (200%) as well as passenger vans for commercial use (270%). We also added heavy-duty body tracking, including hooklifts, water, sewer, and mixer bodies among, others.

"This increases the specific data and analytics we provide dealerships, body manufacturers, distributors, and OEMs that can be used to predict what stock will move faster in which markets, solving one of the major challenges the commercial industry faces," Schifferle added.

Editor's note: This news story first appeared on the website of Auto Dealer Today, a companion publication.