Class 8 truck orders take a timeout in January

Slower Class 8 orders not a trend

A retrenchment to 18,400 orders in January in no way suggests a trend, especially after five consecutive months of year-over-year improvement in bookings.

“Given how robust Class 8 orders were into year end, the relative pause in January is not surprising,” Eric Crawford, ACT’s vice president and senior analyst, said in a news release. “We note that over the final four months of 2022, nearly 159,000 Class 8 net orders were placed.”

Preliminary North American Class 8 net orders have declined for the fourth consecutive month after September’s record bookings, FTR Transportation Intelligence reported. The firm, which competes with ACT, reported 21,600 units in January, down 25% from December but up 2% year over year. On a rolling 12-month basis, Class 8 orders came in at 303,000 units.  

FTR: ‘Recent activity is healthy’

“Putting the order numbers into perspective is important,” FTR Chairman Eric Starks said in a news release. “In the first half of 2022, orders averaged just shy of 18,000 units per month. This suggests that recent activity is healthy, and January itself is up 2% year over year. “

Divining meaning from monthly orders is unwise, Paccar’s Feight said.

I think that following orders on a month-to-month basis is a risky thing to do and to try to get any guidance out of that,” he said. “Because sometimes it’s fleet-buying season. Sometimes, different OEMs will handle it differently.”

Supply issues linger for Volvo more than Daimler Truck or Paccar

Volvo Group North America is an outlier. It did not open its 2023 truck orderbook in the third quarter or for much of the fourth quarter, resulting in 21% lower orders. Volvo remains more affected by supply chain disruptions than Paccar and Daimler Truck, which suggested parts availability issues are largely behind them.

“[The decrease] should absolutely not be overread,” Martin Lundstedt, Volvo Group CEO, said on the company’s Jan. 26 earnings call. “We gradually are opening [orderbooks and] we have a good refilling into the remainder of the year.”

Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF Trucks orders for the second half are “coming in nicely,” Paccar’s Feight said. “It seems like it will fill in 2023 well.”

Daimler Truck said it expects solid results for all of 2022 when it reports on March 10. Traton Group, which owns Navistar International, reports its Q4 and full-year results on March 7.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Feb. 5 to add commentary from FTR.

Related articles:

Volvo Group sets Q4 delivery record as supply chain issues linger

Paccar sets Q4 and 2022 records in revenue and net income

Daimler Truck CEO calls for strong Class 8 market in ‘23

Click for more FreightWaves articles by Alan Adler.