Class 8 Truck Sales Hit 17-Year Low

January Total of 7,374 Is 23% Below 2008

By Frederick Kiel, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Feb. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.

U.S. trucking customers bought just 7,374 new Class 8 tractors in January, the lowest one-month total in 17 years and a drop of more than 5,000 units from December, WardsAuto.com reported.



Sales declined 23.2% from last January’s total of 9,600, and two research firms reported that new truck orders in January were even lower.

“These sales numbers are bad, worse than our expectations by more than 1,000, and tell us we’re in a tough environment for both equipment manufacturers and carriers,” Eric Starks, president of the research and consulting firm FTR Associates, Nashville, Ind., told Transport Topics.

“Sales will be as bad or worse in the next few months, and we were already forecasting an ugly 2009 before these numbers came out, at just 101,000 Class 8 sales for the entire year,” Starks added.

Last year, manufacturers sold 133,473 Class 8s in the United States, according to Ward’s.

“We expect the first quarter of 2009 to be the weakest quarter since the truck market downturn began in 2007,” W.M. “Rusty” Rush, chief executive officer of Rush Enterprises Inc., said in the company’s latest earnings statement.

The company operates more than 50 truck dealerships in 10 states.

Nevertheless, executives of two truck manufacturers told a meeting of the Heavy Duty Manufacturers Association in Orlando, Fla., last week that they expected higher sales than had been predicted.

Sales had been rising moderately during the last seven months of 2008, reaching 12,747 in December.

January’s total was the worst month for sales since January 1992, when 6,738 trucks were moved, Ward’s said.

Like new sales, “orders were uniformly horrible for the month of January, and we’ve now had two consecutive months of the worst orders since the end of 2002,” Kenny Vieth, partner in ACT Research Co., told TT. “The weakness is not just in the U.S., but orders in Canada and Mexico have also been weak, as have export markets,” Vieth said. “This broad-based downturn in demand highlights the threats of the current financial crisis.”

ACT said the truck manufacturers received 6,700 Class 8 orders last month in the United States, while FTR Associates counted 6,586 orders for January.

Total North American orders were 7,900, compared with 22,900 in January 2008, ACT said.

All brands experienced a drop in sales last month except for Freightliner Trucks, which sold 2,527 tractors, a 3.7% increase.

Freightliner, part of Daimler Trucks North America, had a 34.3% market share in January. The company was the market leader in total 2008 sales, with a 25.4%.

DTNA’s Sterling Trucks, which ends production in March, sold 354 Class 8s for a 4.8% market share. DTNA’s other subsidiary, Western Star Trucks, sold 86 tractors for 1.2% of the month’s market.

DTNA did not respond to requests for comment.

Navistar Inc.’s International Trucks had January sales of 2,111 units, a drop of 14% from a year earlier. Its market share for January was 28.6%.

“The truck market obviously was bad in January, but you should note that month-to-month numbers can vary greatly and not read a lot into January,” Navistar’s spokesman Roy Wiley said, adding it was the largest market share the company has ever had.

Paccar Inc. was third in market share with 18.9%, with its Peterbilt Motors unit selling 741 trucks and sister firm Kenworth Trucks moving 654.

But Peterbilt’s January sales were 31.7% below last year and Kenworth dropped 35.6%. Peterbilt’s market share for the month was 10%; Kenworth had 8.9%.

Kenworth and Peterbilt spokesmen declined comment.

Volvo AB ’s two subsidiaries held a 12.2% market share for January. Volvo Trucks North America sold 540 Class 8s, but that figure was off 63.4% from January 2008.

Mack sold 360 tractors in January, down 33.9% from last year. VTNA had 7.3% of January’s market and Mack had 4.9%.

Scott Kress, VTNA’s senior vice president of sales, said that most customers are not trying to grow their fleets because of excess capacity.