A lineup of Freightliner em2 trucks. Freightliner, a brand of Daimler Truck North America, sold the most Class 7 trucks at 1,737 units. (Daimler Truck North America)
U.S. retail sales of medium-duty trucks continued to trend below year-ago comparisons in February after a short-lived uptick the prior month, according to data from Wards Intelligence.
Classes 4-7 retail truck sales for the month decreased 16.8% to 15,824 units from 19,022 a year ago. This follows a 5.2% year-over-year increase in January. Medium-duty truck sales also fell 17.7% sequentially from the 19,216 units reported in January. Medium-duty sales have been struggling to keep up with year-ago comparisons since about midway through last year.
“To use a boring, overused word, it’s very interesting,” ACT Research Vice President Steve Tam said. “I think one of the things that we’ve seen through this cycle is a buildup of inventory in the more auto-centric folks. There’s been an increase in inventory across the board, but, if you think about actually truly stocking chassis at the dealer level, that’s been a phenomenon that’s been really more concentrated in the automotive-centric side than on the truck side.”
Tam pointed out that customers on the automotive side tend to be retail buyers that are less focused on market dynamics than the commercial trucking side. This means there are different market considerations for the truck manufacturers to contend with depending on whether they build more trucks on the lighter or heavier side of the medium-duty category.
Tam
“I guess a different way to say that is, you look at their large lease and one-way rental companies, they’re not buying Class 4 or 5 vehicles,” Tam said. “They’re buying a Class 6 or 7 truck, and we saw a much smaller change, much more muted dynamics, in that space.”
ACT Research also is becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of a recession.
“That’s only going to serve to put further downward pressure on the results,” Tam said. “We just put out a new forecast on [March 10] last week. … But midcycle, we’re actually going through the exercise right now of, if you will, scenario planning.”
Year-over-year sales declined in every medium-duty class. Class 7 truck sales decreased 8.4% to 4,160 units from 4,541. Class 6 sales slipped 3.4% to 5,019 units from 5,194. Classes 4 and 5 sales fell 28.4% to 6,645 units from 9,287.
Freightliner, a brand of Daimler Truck North America, sold the most Class 7 trucks at 1,737 units. International Motors sold the most Class 6 trucks at 1,388 units. Ford sold the most Class 5 vehicles at 3,285 units. Isuzu sold the most Class 4 trucks with 664.
