Trucking news: ACT reports gain in trailer order activity

Data published this week by ACT Research, a provider of data and analysis for trucks and other commercial vehicles, stated that September Class 8 trailer order activity was up in September, with net orders roughly 31 percent ahead of August and up 22 percent annually.

ACT also reported that total trailer factory shipments were up about 65 percent compared to September 2010.

“Production is still outpacing new order intake, despite the improvement in orders in September,” said Frank Maly, Director CV Transportation Analysis and Research with ACT, in a statement. “This is reducing the backlog. However, we cannot divorce ourselves from seasonality: orders are always weak and backlogs always fall through the third quarter. On a seasonally adjusted basis, total trailer backlogs have been virtually unchanged since May.”

Orders for trucking equipment have been in a relative slowdown occurring since a big order intake in April, caused by some artificial things that were starting to pull demand ahead, said Steve Tam, vice president-commercial sector at ACT, in a recent interview.

Among these “artificial” things are signals from truck OEMs that price increases for parts and components is coming, with discounting starting to cease as pricing is returning their way.

These things all manifested themselves in the form of some type of a price increase, with truckers looking to buy equipment doing so in April, according to Tam.

“Truckers are creatures of habit so their capital investment cycle follows a fairly predictable pattern, which helps us gauge what is going on,” said Tam. “We can expect to see orders remain down at this lower level through at least September and probably October.”