March Truck Orders Increase 11% Year-Over-Year
Orders for Class 8 trucks were 11% higher in March than the same month last year, at 21,817 units, according to preliminary data released by FTR Associates.
The order rate of more than 21,000 units “is a good sign for the near-term,” FTR President Eric Starks said. “We expect that anything above 19,000 units in orders adds to the backlog of orders to be built, which we believe will be confirmed when numbers are finalized mid-month.”
Orders slipped 4% in March from February,
FTR said its full-year forecast requires an average order intake of about 22,000 units per month for the next six months, with March’s figures near that level.
“If orders come in nearer to 25,000 units for the next three months it would make us feel more comfortable about moving our forecast higher for the second half of the year,” Starks said in a statement.
“The industry will have to be careful looking at the year-over-year changes for orders through the summer as we saw a noticeable falloff in order activity in the middle of last year. Therefore, we would expect to see healthy year-over-year gains over the next five months,” he said.
