Medium-Duty Total Volume Drops in November

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Medium-duty U.S. retail truck sales volumes showed further signs of hitting bottom during November, even though they declined for the 21st consecutive month on a year-over-year basis.

Truck makers and their dealers generated retail sales of 17,560 vehicles in Classes 3-7 for the month, down 4.2% from a year ago, and 193,045 units for the year through Nov. 30, down 30.3%, WardsAuto.com said on Dec. 10.

In the comparable times in 2008, businesses bought 18,323 trucks for the month and 277,014 vehicles for the year to date.

Volumes in gross-vehicle-weight rating Class 7 grew for the first time since September 2006, and Class 3 expanded for the second straight month. However, Classes 4-6 continued to contract.

“I think we’ve seen the bottom of the market in Class 7, and even a bit of a pre-buy ahead of the 2010 regulations,” said Bill Kozek, general manager of Kenworth Trucks, a division of Paccar Inc.

“Sales are a bit better, but I don’t think we can yet call it the start of the recovery,” said Roy Wiley, spokesman for Navistar Inc., the he market share leader in Class 7 with 38.9% of sales for the year to date.

Kozek said a lot of his Class 7s go to body builders who turn the chassis into tow trucks, dump trucks, electric utility cranes and beverage distribution trucks. The body builders will have less space to work with next year, he said, because the 2010 diesel engines with more emission controls will use up space that could have gone to those work applications.

For the medium-duty segment, 2005 and 2006 were the peak times, with volumes of more than 410,400 each year. The last month of growth was February 2008.

Class 7 sales were 3,180 units for the month, up 11.7% from the 2,846 trucks sold in November 2008. Year-to-date sales declined 21.5% to 35,722 vehicles.

Class 3 buyers took 9,034 trucks in November, a 5.1% increase from the 8,594 moved a year ago. Cumulative sales were 98,523 units, a 20.6% decline.

On the down side, the Class 6 monthly volume was 2,011 trucks, a 16.8% decline from 2,417 units. Eleven-month sales plunged 44.4% to 20,364 vehicles.

Class 5 added 2,060 new units, a 17% decrease from the 2,483 sold the November before. Cumulative sales were 21,114 units, a 43.2% fall-off.

Class 4 endured the worst performance of the month and the year so far, with just 1,275 monthly sales, a 35.7% plunge from 1,983 a year ago. The year-to-date volume fell 48.4% to 17,322 trucks.