'WHITE van man' is gradually taking over Northern Ireland's roads and motorways again . . .
There were 109,355 commercial vans registered in the north in 2015, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
They are among a record 4,007,331 vans in the UK, which between them cover around 45 billion miles each year.
And the SMMT says new van registrations grew 1.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2016 alone, following a bumper 2015 which saw more than 370,000 vehicles registered.
Sustained business confidence and the continuing surge in demand for online deliveries have been key to stimulating this growth, the vehicle monitoring organisation said.
SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said: “Commercial vehicles have never been more important to the economy, transporting vital goods and services using the latest low emission technology."
The new figures – released this morning to coincide with the launch of the Commercial Vehicle Show at the Birmingham NEC – underline the importance of the commercial vehicle sector which contributes £11 billion annually to the UK economy.
Commercial vehicles cover 61 billion miles each year in the UK, with vans accounting 45 billion of these – an all-time high.
Almost 3,000 tonnes of goods are moved by road every minute – three times more than by water and rail combined.
More than half (57 per cent) of the vans on the road are white, with silver (11.4 per cent) in second place and blue (9 per cent) third.
The SMMT says the combined payload volume of all the vans in the UK adds up to 26.2 million cubic metres – the equivalent of 10,483 Olympic swimming pools.
