June Truck Sales Jump 21%

This story appears in the July 21 print edition of Transport Topics.

Class 8 vehicle sales surged 21.6% in June to 19,373 units, the third-highest monthly total since the end of 2006, WardsAuto.com reported.

All original equipment manufacturers posted double-digit gains in their heavy-duty sales, and the year-to-date total of 99,790 trucks is 16.3% higher than the corresponding first half of 2013.

The only other two months to top 19,000 since the boom year of 2006 — when sales averaged more than 23,000 per month — were December of 2011 and 2013. The final month of any year is traditionally the strongest month of the year for sales.

“Demand is increasing at a pretty good clip, and we’re seeing retail sales on the heavy-duty side catching up to where the demand is,” said Steve Tam, vice president at ACT Research Co. in Columbus, Indiana.

“We’ve seen orders building ahead of sales and are starting to see trucks being ordered a little bit ahead of time. These are intentional transactions — they’re premeditated,” he told Transport Topics on July 16.

When there is a big spike in sales, there is sometimes a tendency to see if the same month a year earlier had a low total — but that wasn’t the case with June, Tam added.

Sales last June were just under 16,000, according to WardsAuto.com’s figures.

Although year-to-date sales are nearly identical to the 2012 six-month total of 99,246, it is almost 40% higher than the first half of 2011 and more than twice as large as 2010’s half-year total.

Last month’s increases were spread among all manufacturers, led by Daimler Trucks North America’s Freightliner brand, which rose 19.2% to 7,092 trucks.

Freightliner held its top spot among brands, with 36.6% market share, up from 35% in May.

DTNA “is very pleased with the continued strength of the Class 8 retail sales results, as well as the improvements for both Freightliner and Western Star over 2013,” said David Hames, general manager for marketing and strategy.

“We are seeing the results of the strong order environment, coupled with providing trucks that meet the needs of our customers for all trucking applications,” he told TT last week. “We expect the sales results to continue to be strong, given the healthy industry backlog and the current order levels up 27% year-over-year through June.”

Daimler’s Western Star nameplate saw its sales jump 48.2% to 286 trucks.

Navistar International Corp.’s sales of its International brand improved 13.7% to 2,529, holding its No. 3 spot in market share with 13.1%.

“Industry sales are proving to be more consistent in the second half of the year, and we expect that growth will continue through 2015,” John McKinney, Navistar’s senior vice president of North America truck sales and president of global bus, said last week.

“The North American truck fleet is still old, and the availability of new technologies that drive improved fuel economy and vehicle uptime will be appealing to customers now in a position to make new truck investments,” McKinney said.

An analyst wrote last week that truck sales were increasing for a number of reasons.

“Some of the key factors supporting recent improvements in demand include a relatively old North American truck fleet, Navistar’s increased market presence, the return of large fleets to the market and fuel efficiency of new trucks,” JPMorgan Chase analyst Ann Duignan wrote.

“Acceleration in nonresidential construction activity is an additional source of upside for 2014,” she wrote in a July 17 note to investors.

Volvo Trucks posted the largest percentage sales gain among brands, jumping 44.3% to 2,378 trucks, ranking No. 5 in market share, with 12.3%.

Volvo’s year-to-date sales have risen 44.1%, to 12,611 units, while its six-month market share rose to 12.6% from 10.2% in the same period last year.

Mack Trucks’ sales rose 18.7% to 1,735 trucks, accounting for a 9% market share, while its year-to-date sales have gained 19.4% to 8,225 trucks.

Volvo and Mack officials declined to comment last week because the two brands’ parent company, Volvo Group, is scheduled to release its second-quarter earnings report July 18.

Paccar Inc.’s Kenworth and Peterbilt brands posted increases of 29.3% and 11.2%, respectively in June.

Kenworth held at No. 2 in market share with 14.6% and 2,819 trucks sold, while Peterbilt held at No. 4, with 13% and 2,522 units.

Kenworth’s sales rose 20.4% in the first half of the year, to 13,712, while Peterbilt’s have gained 13.3%, to 13,136. Officials from both Paccar units declined to comment last week.