Jobopps1118

OWNING THE WHEEL
BY LYNDON FINNEY
TRUCK SALES KEEP ROLLING IN AS INDUSTRY
SCRAMBLES TO KEEP UP WITH SURGING ECONOMY
In 1967, Sonny and Cher recorded “The Beat
Goes On.” It began with the lines, “The beat
goes on, the beat goes on; drums keep pounding
a rhythm to the brain.”
Suffice to say that with respect to new Class 8
trucks, sales keep going on and so do the orders,
which keep pounding the “brains” of computers
at OEMs.
U.S. Class 8 retails sales in August totaled
24,443 (the best month since June 2015), an improvement
of almost 16 percent month-overmonth
and 38 percent year-over-year, according
to ACT Research.
Year-to-date, sales are 157,682 and, a whopping
233 percent improvement compared to the
first eight months of 2017.
ACT said tractor sales in August totaled the
best month since June 2015. Month-over-month
that was just short of a 20 percent improvement;
year-over-year it was a 51 percent gain and sales
on a year-to-date basis have been, 115,676 which
is up 257 percent compared to last year.
The sales boom is not unprecedented, said
Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst at ACT.
“When you get a freight transition in the market,
say 2003 to 2004 or 2013 to 2014 or going
back even farther from 1997 to 1998, you get that
inflection in freight. The truckers all want to truck
at the same time and you get those crazy comparisons
for a while,” Veith told The Trucker.
As for orders, ACT reported that the industry
booked 53,100 units in August. FTR reported
52,400 units were booked, surpassing last month’s
total by 300 orders.
And just how is the truck order report going to
impact the ability to build these vehicles?
“I suppose that is the challenge we’ve been
talking about for several months, Vieth said.
“Fleets and independent contractors are ordering
a lot more trucks than the industry has the
ability to produce and it takes time to ramp up
production.
“If I look at the period 2011 to 2017, the average
year on a North American basis was like
265,000 units per year. In the last three months on
a seasonally adjusted basis North American Class
8 orders have been placed at almost a 700,000
annual rate. Even if I go back to 2006, which is
the best year of all times, the industry still only
managed to build 376,000 units. So we are seeing
orders almost double the best year in history
right now and if I look at the past 12 months and
as opposed to seasonally adjusted and annualizing,
Class 8 orders are at 425,000 over the last 12
months. So truckers are making money, the new
trucks have a lot of features like fuel economy that
are highly-desirable right now.”
Vieth said the industry was in all-time record
territory for Class 8 backlogs, adding that in the
face of the current demand, the OEM industry’s
ramp-up has been a little bit slower than would
normally be seen.
“Part of that is really reflected in the same kind
of problems the trucking industry is having and
that’s the ability to find employees,” Vieth said.
“You think of all the parts that go on a truck and
all the suppliers that have to ramp up at the same
time and now we find ourselves in this situation:
With sub 4 percent unemployment you can’t snap
your fingers and find a bunch of readily available
employees.”
In August, Vieth said the Class 8 backlog was
280,700 units and “it wouldn’t surprise me if it
doesn’t happen in September or maybe by October,
that we are going to see that backlog up over
300,000 units.”
At August’s production rate, it would take 210
days to build out the backlog, Vieth said, noting
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