Medium-Duty Sales in November Point to Ongoing Strength

Medium-Duty Sales
Trucks sit at a Rush dealership. (TT File Photo)

Sales of medium-duty trucks in November barely budged from a year earlier, rising just 1.4% and boosted primarily by a modest gain in the lighter classes, WardsAuto.com reported.

Sales of Class 4-7 trucks inched up to 18,101 compared with 17,844 a year earlier.

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One analyst said the typical pattern is for orders to go from 5-6% below average in September to 7-8% above average in October, then back down to 5-6% below average in November.



“The fact they were pretty much flat is kind of a testament to the ongoing strength in this space. We would have expected to see even as much as a 15% sequential drop,” said Steve Tam, ACT Research Co. vice president.

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Sales in October were 20,631, according to Ward’s.

In November, Class 7 sales dipped 1.8% to 5,060, Class 6 sales increased 1.7% to 5,328 and Class 4-5 sales increased 3.5% to 7,713.

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For the 11-month period, total sales rose 6.7% to 215,098 compared with a year earlier as all segments were in positive territory.

At the same time, over the course of the past six and 12 months, medium-duty orders averaged 24,000 and 24,900, respectively, according to ACT.

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One dealership executive predicted ongoing strength in this sector.

With all the different dynamics, such as last-mile delivery, that are coming into distribution, “I expect medium-duty to remain strong for the next three, four or five years,” W.M. “Rusty” Rush, Chairman and CEO of Rush Enterprises said during a recent media roundtable.

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And when the market dip comes, it will not be as steep in the medium-duty sector compared with Class 8, he added.

Asked if the company had a plan for selling last-mile vehicles, Rush said, “We will evolve with the OEMs. I feel good that the brands we represent will be on top of all of that and we will, hopefully, benefit from all of that.”

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Rush is the nation’s only publicly traded truck dealership and has 110 locations in 21 states. It sells medium-duty trucks from Ford Motor Co., Hino Trucks and International Truck and Isuzu Commercial Truck of America Inc., in addition to Class 8 trucks. Hino is a unit of Toyota Co. International is a unit of Navistar Inc.

In its third-quarter earnings statement, Rush reported its Class 4-7 sales increased 18% compared with a year earlier and accounted for 5.1% of the total U.S. market.