Cargo-Box Makers Looking for Freight Recovery

Two years of collapsing trailer sales have driven weak manufacturers from the market and left the remaining companies with far more dominant market shares than a decade before.

The contraction in the number of trailer producers, however, has not purged manufacturing capacity from the industry. Instead, survivors have been purchasing the production facilities of their failed competitors, meaning there are still plenty of plants to make dry vans, flatbeds, tanks and other implements for hauling freight.

Now all surviving trailer makers need is an increase in tonnage for motor carriers and other trailer buyers so they will ramp up their purchases.