Shoreham Vehicle Auctions says there are signs online shopping trends could be rubbing off on the van market.

According to managing director Alex Wright, the majority of online shopping is delivered to the consumer in a van and the forecast extra demand for home deliveries starting in November saw a drop of 157% of vans less than two years old selling at auction.

The figures were released by the National Association of Motor Auctions (NAMA) which showed from a total of 4,082 LCVs sold in November, itself a drop of43% compared to October 2012, just 129 were less than two years old.

In December, 154 vans aged less than 24-months were sold at auction from a total of 3,551 LCV vehicles available, also the lowest number of sales recorded in any month in 2012. This reinforces that fleets, in particular daily rental companies, are not defleeting as home delivery companies looked for extra delivery capacity in the run-up to Christmas.

"Home delivery fleets top up their capacity with short term daily rental vehicles during late November and December and so there are very few sub 12-18 month old vehicles coming into the used market," said Wright

"This artificially increases prices of this stock for a couple of months, but reinforces the power that online shopping is having on the remarketing industry."

With the growth of online shopping set to continue to grow, Wright believes that the type of van daily rental fleets run will change to cater for this growing consumer trend.

"The 3.5 tonne long wheelbase mid to high roof van, which makes a good home parcel delivery van will start to grow in popularity again after a few years of operators downsizing to smaller vans," said Wright.

"This will bring about a greater mix of vehicles coming into the used market which has to be good news for those small businesses that purchase ex fleet vans to run their own businesses."

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