Hebei county turns trucks and screws into livestream success stories

What sold Ding, a 20-year veteran of the cargo transport business, was a safety feature: drivers no longer need to climb up the 4-meter-tall cargo box to tie ropes or cover tarpaulins, since the side curtain can be pulled from the ground. He also liked that the truck's reduced axle count saves on fuel and highway tolls. These features were enough to convince him to buy, even though the price ran about 50,000 yuan above what he'd expected.

Wu, who has built an audience of 170,000 since she started livestreaming in 2024, said sellers previously had to market trucks at places like gas stations, limiting their reach to Handan and nearby cities. "As the competition became more fierce, and the profit became less, we developed the new model on livestreaming platforms, to reach clients across the country," she said.

She initially doubted that the medium could sell something as expensive as a truck, but worked to convince viewers she was "selling a tool to make money, instead of merely a truck". The approach paid off: the company now has 20 livestream hosts, and last year sold 1,300 trucks — roughly double its volume before the change — for 350 million yuan in sales, 85 percent of it from livestreams and 70 percent from buyers outside Hebei. Wu's own show accounted for more than 100 million yuan of that total. "We couldn't have achieved results like this in a tough market without livestreaming," she said.