Volvo February truck shipments plunge 51 percent

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - World number two truckmaker Volvo said truck shipments tumbled 51 percent in February as the global economic downturn pummeled demand in all its main markets.

Volvo, which sells trucks under brands such as Renault, Nissan Diesel and Mack as well as its own name, said in a statement on Tuesday shipments plunged 63 percent year-on-year in Europe, its biggest market.

"Overall, it is in line with the expectations we have," Handelsbanken analyst Hampus Engellau said.

"It is pretty much the same levels that we saw in January and that is just where things are at in the first quarter."

In Eastern Europe alone, in recent years a source of strong growth but now hard hit by the financial crisis, deliveries plunged a full 92 percent to just 240 trucks in February.

In North America, shipments fell 6 percent from already very low levels, while deliveries in Asia tumbled 47 percent.

Volvo fell to a fourth-quarter pretax loss as the highly cyclical truck industry saw demand evaporate as a result of the economic downturn, leaving truckmakers scrambling to cut costs and production capacity.

The Swedish maker of heavy-duty trucks has cut capacity, slashing thousands of jobs to adjust to a downturn some analysts believe will see the European truck market contract 50 percent this year.

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard and Victoria Klesty; additional reporting by Katarina Gustafsson; Editing by Dan Lalor)