Heavy-Duty Truck Orders Drop 55% in April

Truck producers received 17,200 new orders in April for Class 8 vehicles, a 55% drop from 38,094 in April 2011, ACT Research Co. reported.

Through the first four months of 2012, North American customers have ordered 84,855 new heavy-duty vehicles, a 28.6% drop compared with the 118,855 heavy-duty vehicles ordered in the first four months last year, ACT said Thursday.

“We were broadly disappointed in the orders, but we don’t think that one month is an indication of where trucking is going,” Steve Tam, ACT’s vice president, commercial vehicle sector, told Transport Topics.

“ACT Research is still standing pat on our projecting 299,000 Class 8 builds in North America this year,” Tam said.

The previous time the heavy-duty industry received fewer orders was in September 2010, when ACT counted 15,259 orders.