Updated:
7/20/2009 3:30:00 AM
Class 8 Truck Sales Nosedive 31.2% in June
By Jonathan S. Reiskin, Associate News Editor
This story appears in the July 20 print edition of Transport Topics.
Heavy-duty U.S. retail truck sales continued to sag in June, leading to the most anemic first-half sales record in at least 20 years, according to the latest monthly survey by WardsAuto.com.
Original equipment manufacturers and their dealers sold just 43,457 trucks for the year’s first six months, a 33.4% decline from the 65,268 units moved during the same time in 2008, Ward’s said July 9. The monthly tally was 8,006 vehicles, down 31.2% from the 11,637 trucks sold in June 2008.
Navistar Inc. was the only truck maker to post a sales gain for the month, and credited purchases by large customers. All other manufacturers saw their monthly volume erode by more than 35% relative to last June.
“There seems to be more people asking for prices, and that’s good, but no one’s pulling the trigger,” said Cooper Sykes, owner of Cooper Kenworth.
“We had hoped for more results from the stimulus spending, but there were only one or two contracts from that. I can’t see any sustained uptick; it’s more of one week up and then one week down,” said Sykes, who operates throughout North Carolina.
“New and used sales are just stagnant. . . . People are on indefinite hold,” said Peterbilt dealer Kenneth Doonan of Wichita, Kan.
Doonan commented after meet-ing with other Peterbilt dealers from around the nation and said that reports of slow sales were consistent.
The current six-month total for Class 8s is the lowest since 1989, when Ward’s started its truck sales survey. The Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association kept data before then, but that association is now defunct.
ACT Research Co. reported that orders for new North American Class 8 trucks have been stuck consistently below 10,000 units for the past six months.
“Orders are still pretty weak, remaining well below last year’s level for the year to date,” said Steve Tam, an ACT vice president. “And there’s nothing on the horizon to indicate a change. Industrial production, for in-stance, is dismal at best,” he said.
On July 15, the Federal Re-serve System said its U.S. industrial production index fell again in June to the lowest level since the summer of 1998. The industrial production index is closely watched by freight transportation executives and has fallen in 16 of the last 18 months after peaking in December 2007.
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