Medium-duty truck orders accelerate

by Truck News

COLUMBUS, Ind. — Medium-duty truck orders posted a 14% improvement in March compared to last year, marking the sixth year-over-year gain in the past seven months, according to ACT Research.

“The medium-duty market rode strong truck and bus orders to a sixth year-over-year gain in the past seven months. Of those six beats, five were double-digit gains, including a 14% order improvement in March versus last year,” said Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst, ACT Research. “March represented the fourth best order month since the second half of 2006.”

Class 8 net orders softened, coming in at 24,600 units in March.

However, Vieth said the drop is not alarming.

“A 300,000 unit annualized rate of order placement represents solid support for an industry already sitting on nearly seven months of unbuilt orders,” he said. “The first quarter represents three of the four weakest sales months of the year. Despite softness in the actual data, on a seasonally adjusted basis Class 8 retail sales in Q1 occurred at a strong 335,000 unit SAAR.”


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