November Truck Sales Rise 15.1%
This story appears in the Dec. 22 & 29 print edition of Transport Topics.
U.S. retail heavy-duty truck sales slid in November from their torrid pace of the previous two months, but rose 15.1% over the same month last year, WardsAuto.com reported.
The 16,706 total was the highest November in three years and followed sales of more than 20,000 in both September and October. Through 11 months, Class 8 retail sales are at 197,026, which is already greater than the full-year totals of every year since 2006.
“I don’t see any reason why December shouldn’t be a strong month,” said Stephen Volkmann, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. “It’s the end of the year, truckers are making a lot of money, fuel is down, rates are up. It feels like transportation — and trucking is part of this — is the single strongest end market I can see across the economy.”
W.M. “Rusty” Rush, chairman and CEO of Rush Enterprises, the largest and only publicly traded U.S. truck dealership, said while November’s total was “not as much as I would have anticipated,” his company “expects a big December.”
“Business is good . . . we’re still talking about the biggest year since ‘06,” he told reporters at a Dec. 16 press conference in San Antonio.
“A lot of the carriers I talk to want to continue to lower their fleet age,” Rush said. His company, which sells Peterbilt and International trucks, “saw a lot of diversification this year among broad market segments” between fleets and vocational units.
“In the Peterbilt division, over half of what we sell is in the vocational markets, not over-the-road, [and] we saw a nice balance this year,” he said.
Ward’s reported that Peterbilt’s Class 8 sales improved 18% year-over-year in November to 2,673 units, moving it to the No. 2 brand among OEMs.
Kenworth Truck Co., which along with Peterbilt is part of Paccar Inc., sold about the same number of trucks at 2,665 — a 33% jump from a year ago — with each holding 16% market share.
Ward’s also said Volvo Trucks sold 1,904 trucks, down 1.7% year-over-year, though its market share rose to 11.4% from 10.8% in October.
“Truck sales remain strong as fleets and owner-operators see an increase in freight volume as well as favorable general U.S. economic conditions, including lower oil prices and strong growth in jobs, manufacturing and [gross domestic product],” said Magnus Koeck, vice president of marketing and brand management for Volvo Trucks in North America.
Volvo Group’s other unit, Mack Truck, saw sales jump the most among brands, surging 37.9% to 1,704 for a 10.2% market share.
“A key element of November’s strong sales numbers is customers’ ongoing demand for newer models to replace their aging vehicles,” said John Walsh, Mack’s vice president of marketing.
“The current freight environment remains very strong, which has led some fleets to expand,” he said. “For Mack, November sales continued at a brisk pace, as customers sought out our integrated products and solutions to positively impact their bottom lines through a lower total cost of ownership.”
Navistar International Corp. sold 1,773 trucks, slipping 4.8%. While the company declined comment because of its quarterly earnings that were released last week (see story, p. 5), Rush said he was generally pleased with his company’s investments in its International operations.
“When we invested in the Navistar division, little did I know the [exhaust-gas recirculation] engine that was in front of me in 2010” would later be replaced with industry-accepted selective catalytic reduction, he said.
“The issues they have had with the engine have been righted; that ship was righted two years ago,” Rush said.
“The most valuable asset Navistar has is their distribution network,” he said. “That is not easy to re-create [and] takes billions of dollars of private investment. As they go forward, we are OK with our investment in them.”
Daimler Trucks North America’s Freightliner brand held onto the top spot among OEMs, selling 5,691 big rigs for a 34.1% market share, down from 37% in October.
DTNA’s Western Star niche brand sold 289 units, up 51%.
