The future holds the same as it did for the car industry, where substantial, global overcapacity led to convulsions at the first sign of a credit crunch. As with cars, where niche markets and style trailblazers evinced by brands like Aston Martin, Morgan and Bentley, give them USPs to pull them through, and will see them thrive, all other things being equal, so, too, forklift niche markets like articulated trucks, which show clear, substantial cost benefits over other truck types, will grow over the full business cycle. Other players who pay close attention to proving how they can cut operating costs over, say, a five-year cyle, will also thrive.

For the bread and butter market, however, like diesel counterbalanced trucks, inevitably there will be more consolidation and collapses. Meanwhile, many independent dealers will go down like nine pins