Truck Orders Jump 55.5%; Surge Attributed to Freight Demand

North American fleets ordered 23,800 new Class 8 vehicles in September, a 55.5% jump over the same month last year and a clear sign the heavy-duty truck market recovery is continuing, analysts and industry figures said.

“Monthly North American Class 8 truck orders rose nearly 11% from August to September, confirming that truck replacement efforts by the freight carriers are ongoing, despite the mixed economic news,” David Hames, general manager marketing and strategy, Daimler Trucks North America, told Transport Topics.

DTNA, a subsidiary of Germany-based Daimler AG, builds Freightliner and Western Star trucks and Detroit Diesel engines.

“The carriers are exhibiting confidence that freight will remain at levels requiring new replacement equipment and related improvements in operating efficiencies,” Hames added.

ACT Research, Columbus, Ind., reported Oct. 4 that fleets have ordered 226,900 new Class 8 trucks in 2011 through the end of September, compared with 109,000 in the same nine-month period last year, a gain of 108%.

“What a difference a year makes,” Kenny Vieth, ACT’s president and senior analyst, told TT.

The September figure exceeds July orders of 18,726 and 21,208 in August. In September 2010, fleets ordered 15,257 new Class 8s.

Orders starting picking up significantly last September but hit more than 26,000 in November and stayed well above 20,000 until they hit their high of the current cycle of 38,094 in April, ACT’s data show.

“Part of September’s increase comes against a backdrop of July and August, generally the two weakest order months in any year,” Vieth said, “but I also think the underlying fundamentals will support these types of order numbers that we’ve seen in the past.”

He said that “truckers are making money, used truck prices are healthy and, though the economy might be soft, it’s still generating freight.”

Vieth said that these were “the conditions that are conducive to continued investment by truckers in their equipment.”

Volvo Trucks North America also was confident.

“September’s uptick reflects ongoing replacement demand, which remains the primary driver of new truck sales,” VTNA’s spokesman, Brandon Borgna, told TT.

Volvo’s U.S. sales have experienced the largest percentage growth of any manufacturer, jumping 103.1% through August, compared with the same period of 2010, Wards-Auto.com reported. VTNA, like Mack Trucks Inc., is a subsidiary of Sweden-based Volvo AB.

Dealers generally were just as optimistic as manufacturers, including Katie Hopkins, executive vice president of Truck Centers Inc., a Freightliner and Western Star dealer based in Troy, Ill.

“As far as Truck Centers is concerned, we have seen a lot of quoting activity in September, but now, more ordering in October, which hopefully will be a sign of good things to come in November and December,” Hopkins told TT.

She said that fleets with 50 tractors or more have been doing most of the late-year ordering, trying to beat expected higher prices for 2012 trucks.

Eric Jorgensen, chief executive officer of Peterbilt dealer JX Enterprises, Pewaukee, Wis., said he thought the summer slowdown had more to do with political concerns than the economy.

“What my associates and I saw going on in July and August had more to do with what was happening in Washington, D.C. . . . and internationally . . . than with the general freight environment,” Jorgensen told TT. “That definitely brought a lot of hesitation on higher-end capital purchases [such as] new trucks.”

Ronald Remp, principal of Wheeling Truck Center Inc., a Volvo dealer, was also optimistic.

“People are still very cautiously optimistic, and that’s the majority of the people I’ve talked with, and they’re willing to move forward with new orders,” Remp told TT.

Calls to other heavy-duty truck manufacturers for comment were not returned by press time.