During the recent West Coast press conference in early July, Jonathan Randall, Senior Vice President North American Sales & Marketing, Mack Trucks predicted that the Class 8 truck market will continue to exhibit healthy demand for new trucks. For 2019 Mack Trucks is forecasting that approximately 310,000 trucks of all brands sold across North America.
“We are in a hot market,” says Randall. “The overall truck market continues to perform extremely well. The orders have fallen off significantly, but that was expected. We cannot continue to fill an already full cup. Over five years the industry in Class 8 had taken over 1.3 million new truck orders. So that order intake dip is fully expected. But production is still going very well. We have a very strong order book at Mack and we are very confident that our order book is very solid. We have very limited cancellations.”
Expect next year to be down from this year. “We have forecast this year at 310,000 Class 8 trucks for the U.S., Canada and Mexico,” says Randall. “Last year came in at about 310,000. Our 310,000 number for this year still has a little bit of upward pressure on it because we have not seen the pace fall off.”
The construction truck business remains very strong and stable. “We do not see that changing any time in the near future,” says Randall. But the big growth is in long haul. Long haul made up 44% of total registrations in 2018. In 2019 it makes up 50%. So the big sleeper business is really what is driving the growth this year – a lot of orders, a lot of placements. The freight business, while it shows some signs of softening here and there, it still remains very strong. Next year that is going to soften. It may still be near 50% of the total business, it may back off a little to 47%, but what we do know is that straight truck business is going to be a bigger portion of the overall percentage of registrations for next year. I also believe the day cab business will grow as a percentage of the overall business.”During the recent West Coast press conference in early July John Randall, Senior Vice President North American Sales & Marketing, Mack Trucks predicted that the Class 8 truck market will continue to exhibit healthy demand for new trucks. For 2019 Mack Trucks is forecasting that approximately 310,000 trucks of all brands sold across North America.
“We are in a hot market,” says Randall. “The overall truck market continues to perform extremely well. The orders have fallen off significantly, but that was expected. We cannot continue to fill an already full cup. Over five years the industry in Class 8 had taken over 1.3 million new truck orders. So that order intake dip is fully expected. But production is still going very well. We have a very strong order book at Mack and we are very confident that our order book is very solid. We have very limited cancellations.”
Expect next year to be down from this year. “We have forecast this year at 310,000 Class 8 trucks for the U.S., Canada and Mexico,” says Randall. “Last year came in at about 310,000. Our 310,000 number for this year still has a little bit of upward pressure on it because we have not seen the pace fall off.”
The construction truck business remains very strong and stable. “We do not see that changing any time in the near future,” says Randall. But the big growth is in long haul. Long haul made up 44% of total registrations in 2018. In 2019 it makes up 50%. So the big sleeper business is really what is driving the growth this year – a lot of orders, a lot of placements. The freight business, while it shows some signs of softening here and there, it still remains very strong. Next year that is going to soften. It may still be near 50% of the total business, it may back off a little to 47%, but what we do know is that straight truck business is going to be a bigger portion of the overall percentage of registrations for next year. I also believe the day cab business will grow as a percentage of the overall business.”
