Trailer Orders Fall to Below 10,000 in July
U.S. trailer orders in July fell to less than half of what they were a year earlier as seasonal weakness and cautious fleets still eyeing a lackluster economy cut demand more than expected, ACT Research Co. reported.
Orders sank to 9,950, compared with 20,313 a year earlier, ACT said.
The company said the July figure was preliminary and would be revised.
Orders fell more than 25% sequentially in July from 13,532 in June.
“While July is the industry’s weakest order month from a seasonal perspective, the month-over-month tumble was more than double that projected by seasonal patterns,” Frank Maly, ACT’s director of commercial vehicle, transportation analysis and research, said in a statement.
Also, July’s decline in trailer orders year-over-year approximated the 57% slide in orders for Class 8 trucks last month, compared with July 2015.
That pairing was “a dynamic we have been awaiting as we have long expected that semi-trailer orders could only ‘defy gravity’ for so long by outperforming Class 8 tractor orders,” Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. analyst Michael Baudendistel wrote in a note to investors.
He said he expected orders to rise month-over-month in August as seasonality fades, but still be “down significantly” year-over-year.
Trailer manufacturers are coming off of two booming years, including a record in 2014 with 356,712 orders that then dipped 11% to 315,951 in 2015.
