Van traffic could double by 2040 says FTA report

The FTA says the increase in online shopping and consequent home deliveries goes some way to explaining the rise in van use in recent years.

Around 1 in 10 vehicles on the UK’s roads is now a van.

The UK B2C parcel market, including all deliveries and returns, is due to grow by 4.8% a year. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), who supported FTA in compiling the report, predicts that home delivery volumes will increase by 3.7% per year to 2018; with over 1 billion parcels expected to be home delivered in 2018.

Clothing and footwear is the largest and fastest growing category of parcel home deliveries and will grow by 8.8 % per year to 29% of the total in 2018.

Parcels returns are growing faster than deliveries at around 10% a year.

The number of light commercial vehicles (goods vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight) registered in the UK has increased by 29% over the past 10 years to 3.28 million. 

Over the same 10-year period, the number of HGVs has decreased by 9% to 386,000. 

Aside from online retail, the FTA said a number of factors are likely to have had an impact on this trend:

• increased popularity of just-in-time deliveries;

• more deliveries of critical importance that cannot be stored;

• greater difficulty of hiring HGV drivers and operating HGVs;
• various restrictions on HGVs in urban areas.

The Report continued: "One articulated lorry can carry as much as up to 10 vans, so there are potential implications for kerbside delivery space and congestion arising from any shift towards smaller vehicles.”

The FTA also concedes it is difficult to pinpoint the exact relationship between eCommerce and van usage, as Click and Collect methods grow in popularity.

According to PwC, while B2C home delivery is likely to remain the largest segment of the UK parcel market from 2013–18, Click and Collect and B2C returns will have the highest forecast growth over the period.

PwC estimates that Click and Collect parcel volumes are currently around 7% of B2C parcel deliveries and are set to grow at 11.7% per year to 2018. 

‘Parcel shops’ and other third party collection points are currently only a small part of the B2C parcel market (around 1 to 2%) but are growing.

The PwC UK Total Retail Survey was included in the results.