Medium-Duty Truck Purchases Increase 16% in March

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

U.S. Class 7 sales jumped 20.3% in March compared with the same month last year, while Class 6 sales rose just 1.6%, WardsAuto.com reported.

For Classes 4-7, the medium-duty range, sales in March in-creased 16% to 14,497 from 12,499. For the first quarter, sales rose 17.6% to 36,336 from 30,895 a year earlier.

One truck manufacturer said sales will fluctuate until medium-duty sales recover as much as Class 8 models have, though three truck dealers say they had noticed the swing to stronger Class 7 sales this year.

In March, truck makers sold 4,611 Class 7 models in the United States, WardsAuto.com said April 11. Customers bought 4,239 Class 6 trucks.

Combined sales in Classes 4-5 totaled 5,647 units last month, a 25.7% year-over-year increase, Ward’s said.

Through the first quarter of 2012, truck makers sold 11,685 Class 7 vehicles, up 14%, while they sold 10,619 Class 6 units, up 12.4%, Ward’s said.

Classes 4-5 sales in the first quarter numbered 14,032 trucks, up 25.3% year-over-year, Ward’s said.

“Construction and government, the two major drivers of medium-duty growth, are beginning to pick up but not at the rate that we have seen with over-the-road,” David Hames, general manager of marketing and strategy for Daimler Trucks North America, told Transport Topics. “Until these markets reach full recovery, we expect medium-duty sales activity to continue to fluctuate.”

“I think the Ward’s numbers reflect what we’ve seen, too,” Dennis LeGrand, corporate new truck manager for Truck Country, a Freightliner and Western Star dealer, told TT. “Last year, Class 6 sales were was definitely the big class while hardly anything was happening in Class 7. This year, Class 7s are moving and Class 6s are flat.”

Truck Country, headquartered in Dubuque, Iowa, operates 12 locations in Iowa and Wisconsin. Western Star is Daimler’s vocational brand.

“I’d say truck sales are going up in both Classes 4 and 5 and Class 7, while the sixes have slowed up,” Jim Boncosky, new truck sales manager at Diamond International’s headquarters in Memphis, Tenn., told TT.

“The 33,000-pound gross vehicle weight truck . . . is more expensive to buy but requires the same payroll amount, about the same fuel, but can carry a quarter more payload,” Boncosky said.

In March, customers bought 1,993 Class 7 Freightliner trucks, 1,513 of Navistar’s International trucks, 607 from Paccar’s two brands, 385 by Peterbilt and 222 from Kenworth, Ward’s said.

In Class 6, International truck sales totaled 1,805 and 1,603 by Freightliner.

In Classes 4-5, Ford was on top with 3,092 sales in March, with 1,124 sold by Chrysler Group LLC.