The State of the UK Horsebox Market 2025

For editorial use. Data and quotations may be used with attribution to Moving Manes.

In 2025, the UK horsebox market exhibited steady turnover despite wider cost pressures. Trade sellers, who dominated market supply, removed listings in a median of 61 days, indicating an active market with sustained buyer engagement.

Analysis of UK horsebox listings and engagement data in 2025 showed demand concentrated in the mid-weight segment. Vehicles in the 4.6-7.5-tonne range attracted the strongest engagement, reflecting their balance of payload, usability and suitability for serious amateur and semi-professional riders.

A comparable pattern emerged when activity was examined by price. Listings priced between £10,000 and £50,000 accounted for the bulk of measured buyer engagement, with the £10,000-£20,000 bracket generating the highest enquiry rates, pointing to a clear preference for functional value over premium specification.

Taken together, the data suggests a market shaped by selective, rational decision-making rather than contraction. The sections that follow examine these dynamics in greater detail, drawing on listing, pricing and engagement data to assess the state of the UK horsebox market in 2025.

Key Takeaways

• Mid-weight horseboxes (4.6-7.5 tonnes) attracted the highest engagement, with buyer interest most concentrated in this segment.
• The median asking price was £31,995, with the £20,000-£35,000 band accounting for 36.5% of listings, underscoring a market centred on mid-range value.
• Trade sellers dominated supply, clearing stock in a median of 61 days, while private listings in this dataset were removed from the market more quickly, with a median time to removal of around 10 days, albeit based on a small sample.
• Of horseboxes where both chassis registration year and conversion year were recorded, 80.7% were built on a used chassis, with a median chassis age at conversion of six years.

Pricing & Value

Median Asking Prices by Weight Class

Asking prices across the UK horsebox and trailer market showed a clear relationship with gross vehicle weight. The lightest category (up to 3.5 tonnes) carried a median asking price of £27,995, positioning lightweight horseboxes as a distinct segment priced at a premium relative to entry-level trailers.

The mid-weight market showed consistent pricing across segments. Horseboxes in the 3.6-4.5 tonne band carried a median asking price of £33,995, closely matched by the 4.6-7.5 tonne segment - the largest by volume - at £33,445. This pricing convergence suggests that mid-weight horseboxes, regardless of precise tonnage, occupied a similar market position in buyers' minds.

Heavy-duty horseboxes in the 7.6-12-tonne class commanded a median asking price of £69,995. The heaviest category (12.1 tonnes and above) recorded the highest median at £79,995, reflecting the premium specifications and professional-grade builds typical of this segment.

Across the market as a whole, the median asking price was £31,995. This headline figure was shaped by the predominance of lighter weight classes, which accounted for the majority of available inventory.

Price Distribution

Asking prices clustered in the lower-to-middle ranges, aligning with purchasing patterns typically associated with semi-professional and amateur buyers operating within defined capital budgets.

The modal price band was £20,000-£35,000, accounting for 36.5% of all listings. A further 20.5% were priced below £20,000 (3.6% under £10,000 and 16.9% between £10,000 and £20,000), while 23.8% exceeded £50,000. At the top end, vehicles priced above £100,000 represented 8.8% of listings, indicating a specialist but numerically limited premium segment.

Listings in the £50,000-£75,000 range were comparatively sparse, comprising 9.6% of the market. This gap likely reflects segmentation effects, with demand clustering below £35,000-£50,000 and premium buyers concentrating on highly specified vehicles at higher price points. This pattern remained stable across the reporting period.

Market Liquidity & Behaviour

Time to Sell

The median interval between listing creation and removal from the market was 61 days across all sellers (interquartile range 28-112 days). This headline figure, however, concealed a marked divergence in outcomes between seller types.

Trade sellers, who accounted for the majority of listings, recorded a median time to removal of 61 days (interquartile range 28-112 days). This was broadly consistent with typical dealer inventory cycles, where specialist vehicles are commonly marketed over periods of four to eight weeks.

Private listings were removed substantially faster, with a median time to removal of under 10 days, based on a small sample. This may have reflected greater price sensitivity or higher seller motivation relative to trade listings.

Temporal Patterns: Equestrian Events and Market Activity

Market activity showed clear temporal alignment with the British equestrian event calendar. The visualisation below overlays the 2025 event schedule against normalised relative interest, highlighting periods of heightened attention rather than absolute activity levels.

The flagship five-star events - Badminton Horse Trials in May and Burghley Horse Trials in September - alongside the Horse of the Year Show in October, coincide with high levels of market interest. Secondary peaks show alignment with the Hickstead Derby Meeting in June, the Blenheim Palace International in September, and the London International Horse Show in December.

These patterns are likely driven by a combination of behavioural and timing effects. Major competitions may heighten awareness and aspirational purchase consideration among both competitors and spectators; event-driven social activity may increase information-seeking behaviour; and committed buyers may time acquisitions around the competitive calendar. The available data does not allow these effects to be disentangled, nor does it establish whether heightened interest resulted in immediate transactions or deferred purchasing intent.

Whilst the visualisation abstracts underlying volumes, the coincidence of discrete interest peaks with major events is robust to the smoothing applied.

Supply Structure & Composition

Base Vehicle Manufacturer Concentration

The underlying base vehicle chassis varied markedly by weight class, reflecting the different commercial vehicle platforms used for light-duty conversions ("up to 3.5 tonnes") and heavier goods vehicles above that threshold.

Across the full historical dataset and all weight classes, Renault held the largest share at 16.7%, followed by Peugeot (15.9%) and Iveco (15.4%). Together, these three manufacturers accounted for 48.0% of recorded horseboxes. This aggregate view, however, masks pronounced segmentation by weight class, with different chassis platforms engineered for distinct operating ranges.

At the lightweight end of the market (up to 3.5 tonnes), supply was dominated by European light commercial platforms, led by Renault (32.3%), Peugeot (25.3%) and Vauxhall (17.7%). These manufacturers - primarily via Master, Boxer and Movano derivatives - formed the backbone of two-horse conversions designed to operate within the 3.5-tonne Category B licence limit.

In the mid-weight 4.6-7.5-tonne segment, the market shifted decisively towards specialist truck platforms. Iveco accounted for 50.8% of listings, followed by DAF at 28.9%, reflecting the engineering requirements of heavier payloads and more complex builds. This transition became more pronounced in the 7.6-12-tonne class, where DAF's share reached 58.6%, with MAN at 20.7% and Iveco at 13.8%.

The heaviest segment (12.1 tonnes and above) showed a more balanced distribution between a small number of specialist manufacturers. Scania held the largest share at 42.6%, followed by DAF at 29.6%, with Mercedes-Benz accounting for a further 10.4%. This composition reflects the narrower range of platforms capable of supporting high-specification, long-distance and professional use cases.

New Builds versus Used Chassis Conversions

Focusing on horseboxes where both the chassis registration year and the conversion (build) year were recorded, listings built on brand-new chassis represented a clear minority, with registration and conversion occurring contemporaneously at the point of listing. The majority were conversions carried out on previously used commercial vehicles, indicating that the market was dominated by secondary-market chassis rather than new platforms.

Among horseboxes built on used chassis, conversion activity was concentrated around vehicles approximately six years old, with most observed activity falling within a mid-life range. This suggests that typical listings combined a contemporary conversion specification with a commercial platform that had already seen several years of prior use.

This clustering is consistent with common capital-allocation practices in commercial vehicle conversion markets, where chassis are often sourced after initial depreciation but before late-life maintenance costs become material. In this window, the conversion itself typically represents the dominant cost component rather than the base vehicle.

The predominance of used-chassis conversions reflected the structural economics of the horsebox market rather than a preference for newly built vehicles. Although new-build listings attracted price premiums, the available stock listed in 2025 remained heavily weighted towards converted platforms completed in earlier years. The observed concentration around mid-life chassis at the point of conversion indicates that converters typically source vehicles part-way through their expected seven-to-ten-year design lifecycle, allowing them to capture residual chassis value while delivering a product that is, from the buyer’s perspective, functionally and aesthetically comparable to a new build.

Mileage Patterns by Chassis Age

Mileage data shows the expected positive relationship between chassis age and accumulated mileage, with wide dispersion at each age point reflecting heterogeneous usage patterns.

New vehicles - aged zero to two years - exhibited minimal recorded mileage, with median values between 0 and 4,000 miles. Median mileage rose to 70,500 miles by five years of age, increased to 93,000 miles at ten years, and reached 126,000 miles at fifteen years and 144,088 miles at twenty years.

These mileage levels should not be interpreted as representative of horsebox usage over time. Instead, they are most plausibly attributed to mileage accumulated prior to conversion, when many chassis are typically used in higher-intensity commercial service before being repurposed as horseboxes. The data therefore points to a step-change in utilisation following conversion, rather than steady mileage accumulation across the vehicle’s full lifespan.

Variance around the medians was substantial at all ages, reflecting a secondary market that ranged from lightly used commercial platforms to extensively worked vehicles prior to conversion. Short-lived deviations from the overall trend reflect composition effects at individual ages, where clusters of high-mileage vehicles can temporarily elevate median values. This wide spread in prior usage translated into a broad condition range at the point of listing, contributing to price dispersion and giving buyers a clear choice between lower-mileage, higher-priced examples and more heavily utilised but cheaper alternatives.

Demand & Engagement

Engagement by Weight Class

Buyer engagement - measured through enquiry and interest activity - varied sharply by weight class, reflecting clear differences in where buyer attention was most strongly concentrated.

Engagement was most strongly concentrated in the mid-weight 4.6-7.5-tonne segment, which recorded the highest interest index (100) and represented the primary focal point of buyer attention. This remained true across a wide range of listing volumes and price points.

Engagement also remained relatively high in the adjacent 3.6-4.5-tonne class (interest index 77), despite a smaller volume of listings. This pattern indicates concentrated demand relative to available supply, rather than broad market dominance.

At higher weights, the 7.6-12-tonne segment recorded engagement levels close to the market peak (interest index 96), reflecting robust demand within a narrower and more specialised buyer base. Beyond this range, engagement fell sharply: vehicles above 12.1 tonnes registered the lowest interest index (17), consistent with a small and highly specialised demand pool.

By contrast, lightweight horseboxes - "up to 3.5 tonnes" - exhibited materially weaker engagement (interest index 33), despite their compatibility with standard car licences. This suggests that practical constraints or perceived value trade-offs limit their appeal relative to heavier alternatives.

Taken together, the engagement profile clearly positions the 4.6-7.5-tonne segment as the market’s centre of gravity, combining the highest and most sustained levels of buyer interest with broad functional appeal.

Engagement by Price Band

Buyer engagement varied considerably by price band, with activity most concentrated in the lower-to-mid ranges of the market.

The £10,000-£20,000 band recorded the highest engagement, with an interest index of 100. This segment attracted the greatest enquiry intensity per listing and the highest proportion of listings receiving buyer interest. It marks the price point at which buyer interest was most reliably expressed.

Engagement fell sharply below £10,000, where the interest index dropped to 33. This suggests that lower-priced vehicles attracted disproportionately less buyer attention, potentially reflecting concerns around condition, specification, or limited inventory depth relative to demand.

Above £20,000, engagement declined progressively. The £20,000-£35,000 and £35,000-£50,000 bands exhibited similar relative interest levels (both index 47), indicating a broad plateau of demand rather than a single dominant price point. This plateau extended to the £50,000-£75,000 range (index 44), before engagement weakened more markedly in the premium segments.

At the upper end of the market, engagement weakened substantially. The £75,000-£100,000 band recorded an interest index of 29, while vehicles priced above £100,000 fell to just 7, indicating a highly constrained buyer pool and likely longer search-to-sale dynamics for premium listings.

Taken together, the engagement profile indicates that the £10,000-£50,000 corridor encompassed the majority of effective market demand, with buyer interest concentrated well below the premium end of the price spectrum.

What This Means for Buyers and Sellers

For buyers, the data pointed to a market where choice and engagement were most concentrated in the mid-weight (4.6-7.5 tonnes) and mid-price (£10,000-£50,000) segments. Within this corridor, inventory was deepest and most varied, spanning multiple chassis platforms, age profiles and specification levels. Searches outside these bounds - whether at the entry level below £10,000, at the specialist heavy-duty end above 12 tonnes, or among premium vehicles priced above £50,000 - faced progressively thinner supply and typically required longer search horizons or greater flexibility on specification and condition.

For sellers, the same concentration shows where demand was most dependable. Listings that sat within the mid-weight and mid-price ranges benefited from materially higher enquiry intensity and faster market clearance. Vehicles outside these core segments were not without demand, but sellers could expect narrower buyer pools, longer marketing periods and a greater reliance on clear positioning - through pricing, specification detail or use-case targeting - to attract the right audience.

Taken together, the data suggests a market that was selective rather than indiscriminate, and active rather than stalled. Buyer behaviour remained disciplined, with engagement coalescing around configurations that balanced capability, cost and availability. For buyers and sellers alike, success lay in recognising where demand concentrated, rather than in pursuing market extremes.

Methodology (Summary)

Median Asking Prices: Defined as the 50th percentile of unique listing prices within each weight class or price band. All prices were expressed in British pounds sterling. Interquartile ranges (IQR) denoted the 25th to 75th percentile, providing a measure of central tendency and dispersion robust to outliers.

Time to Sell: Defined as the number of calendar days elapsed between initial listing creation and removal from the market. The dataset did not distinguish between removals resulting from sale, voluntary delisting, platform removals, or other mechanisms. This metric therefore represented "time to removal" rather than confirmed sales time.

Engagement: An umbrella term for buyer activity, encompassing views, enquiries, and contact requests. Distinct from "enquiry rate" (see below).

Enquiry Rate: Defined as the total number of contact requests (recorded messages or formal enquiries) within each category, divided by the number of unique listings within that category. Expressed as enquiries per listing.

Weight Classes: Defined by gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) in tonnes. The class boundaries (3.5t, 4.5t, 7.5t, 12t) were selected to align with UK driving licence categories and practical use-case segmentation.

Interest Index: A normalised measure of relative engagement across weight classes, scaled to 100 at the peak-engagement class. Not an absolute measure of traffic or conversion rates, but a relative ranking.

Sample Size Sensitivity: Certain segments contained small sample sizes. Weight classes with fewer than 10 listings, and private seller comparisons in particular, should be interpreted with heightened caution; statistical measures may shift materially with addition or removal of individual listings. Figures for these segments were presented primarily as directional indicators rather than definitive estimates.

Temporal Alignment: Weekly user activity aggregates were aligned with published Bank of England monetary policy announcements (February-December 2025), UK Government fiscal events (Spring Statement, Autumn Budget), and British Equestrian Federation competition calendar entries. Alignment was described in terms of temporal proximity only; no causal interpretation was drawn from observed correlations.

Data Sources: Moving Manes platform listings database (UK market, 2025). Bank of England monetary policy announcements and decision dates (February-December 2025). UK Government fiscal statements and announcements (2025). British Equestrian Federation event calendar and competition schedules (2025).

Editorial & Use Disclaimer

This report is provided for informational and editorial purposes only. It is based on advertised listing data and observed engagement patterns, not confirmed transactions or outcomes. While care has been taken to ensure accuracy, the findings should not be relied upon as the sole basis for purchasing, selling, or investment decisions. All interpretations relate to market conditions observed during the reporting period and may not apply outside that context.

Platform Coverage: Moving Manes is a relatively new marketplace, and listing coverage expanded over the reporting period. While the dataset reveals consistent directional patterns in pricing, liquidity and engagement, it should not be interpreted as a complete view of the entire UK horsebox market.