A preliminary reading of heavy-duty Class 8 commercial vehicles net orders for North American markets climbed to 38,200 units in April, 2011, according to ACT Research Co. (ACT).
Net orders jumped 158% from April, 2010, and represented the largest monthly order intake since March 2006. (Preliminary net order numbers are subject to revision and are typically accurate to within 5% plus or minus.)
“Every cycle has one or two of those months when the breadth of participation rises and a confluence of events leads to these types of results. April happened to be that month this cycle,” says Kenny Vieth, ACT’s president and senior analyst.
Vieth sites several driving factors that have led to the order spike:
* healthy freight
* increasing trucker profits
* pent-up replacement demand
* rising used equipment prices
* improving creditworthiness
* rising prices for new vehicles
* lead times for new equipment that have pushed out to the end of the year
“If that was not enough, there is the accelerated depreciation schedule for 2011 to consider. The challenge now is for the industry to translate all of this demand into trucks,” Vieth notes.
ACT publishes new and used commercial vehicle (CV) industry data, market analysis and forecasting services for the North American market, as well as the U.S. tractor-trailer market and the China CV market. For more information on ACT, please visit http://www.actresearch.net.
