Trailer Orders Fall 11% in 2015, But Shipments Set Record
U.S. trailer orders for 2015 fell 11% compared with 2014 to slightly more than 315,000, but shipments of trailers hit an all-time high as they climbed to more than 300,000, ACT Research said
ACT said the previous record for trailer shipments was set in 1999, but 2015 surpassed that by a few dozen.
In December, year-over-year orders plunged 38% to about 27,000 trailers, ACT said.
“Two factors impacted December’s orders: the continued front-loading of the order season, along with market headwinds from freight rates and volumes that had already been reflected in Class 8 order levels,” ACT analyst Frank Maly said in a statement.
“But certainly December was a really solid number,” he told Transport Topics.
FTR Associates analyst Don Ake said December’s orders, compared with a year earlier, “met expectations that orders would fall back into a more reasonable range after the robust activity in November 2015.”
