November Heavy-Duty Orders Up 5.7%

This story appears in the Dec. 9 print edition of Transport Topics.

November Class 8 truck orders rose 5.7% from a year ago, holding at more than 20,000 for a second straight month, but slipped from October’s almost two-year high, ACT Research reported.

The 21,200 North American orders followed October’s 26,215 total, which was revised down slightly but remained the highest tally since December 2011.

Orders are up 13.5% year-to-date through November, at 235,783 units, according to ACT figures released Dec. 3.

Despite the 19.1% monthly backslide, the November figure was the second-largest since May, continuing the 2013 trend of year-over-year gains and posting the 10th such increase.

ACT generally considers the next month important after a strong showing like October, as even a day or two can generate a swing in data, ACT Vice President Steve Tam said.

“Certainly, everyone would have liked to see a higher number,” Tam told Transport Topics after the release. “Whenever we have a big spike and a corresponding drop, we tend to take them together [because] quite literally, a day can make a difference.

“If you throw away October, we’re running at about 21,000 [orders] a month, and the November number is not terribly out of line with that,” he said. “What we call ‘The Great OK’ continued — psychologically it’s a disappointing [drop], but overall we’re in pretty good shape.”

FTR Associates, another research firm, reported a similar Class 8 order figure of 20,915, the highest for November since 2010.

The numbers are “continuing to show a solid year-over-year increase,” said Don Ake, FTR’s vice president of commercial vehicles.

But, he added, they “are not sufficient to indicate a strong beginning to 2014. Order activity was below our expectations and needs to be stronger in December to fill up [first-quarter] build slots.

“The market continues to grow, but slowly, [and] the three-month average is consistent with our 2014 forecast,” Ake said in a statement.

A Navistar International Corp. executive said the advancement of the company’s selective catalytic reduction technology was boosting its truck orders.

“Following the completion of our heavy-duty SCR product transition in late October, we continued to show progress with steady Class 8 orders in November,” said Bill Kozek, president of Navistar’s North American truck and parts business.

“As we approach the end of the calendar year, we are also still working with key customers to finalize their 2014 buying plans,” Kozek told TT in an e-mailed statement.

An industry analyst agreed with Tam’s assessment that taking the two months together indicates a trend of modest overall order growth.

“November orders were a bit below our expectations but followed a similar sequential pullback seen in the previous two years,” Jefferies & Co. analyst Stephen Volkmann wrote in a Dec. 3 note to investors. “Looking at the two months together, orders remain relatively in line.”

Volkmann noted that Class 8 backlogs improved in October but likely will remain flat as orders are in line with original equipment manufacturer build plans.

Medium-duty truck orders in Classes 5-7 continued to be strong, rising 26% year-over-year but down 6% sequentially on a seasonally weaker month, he noted.

“These numbers continue the modest but choppy growth pattern we have seen over the past year,” Volkmann wrote.

With the year coming to an end, the fourth quarter is often a harbinger for the coming year, ACT’s Tam said.

“We are at that time of year when OEMs can start taking orders for the next model year, and trucking companies start making trade-in plans,” Tam said.

Asked if trucking companies could be placing fourth-quarter orders to get deliveries by year-end to ensure 50% depreciation, he said, “That certainly is a possibility and could have been a contributing factor. . . . It’s definitely something worthy of consideration.

“Even with the November orders, there is only one OEM with build slots full for the rest of 2013, so it’s still possible to order a truck to be delivered by end of year,” Tam told TT.

He said that seasonally adjusted annual order levels of about 233,600 are above the seasonally adjusted fleet replacement level of about 225,000 units.

Including November’s figures, orders have averaged about 21,500 per month this year, which would yield just over 257,000 on an absolute basis, Tam noted.

While ACT does not forecast order figures, “I would expect to see an uptick on an absolute basis for December orders — probably somewhere between October and November,” he added.