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New Class 8 truck orders in April up from a year ago, down from March

New Class 8 truck orders in April up from a year ago, down from March

New class 8 orders for April were described as being within seasonal norms. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

The weak trucking market, so evidenced in disastrous first-quarter earnings for both truckload and LTL carriers, is having a mixed impact on new Class 8 truck orders, according to the two key companies that track that data.

FTR Transportation Intelligence reported that preliminary net orders for April were 14,000 units. That was down 28% from March but up 12.5% from April 2023. 

Meanwhile, ACT Research pegged Class 8 net orders last month at 15,600 units. That was down 1,800, or 10.3%, from March but up 30% from a year ago.

According to FTR, the April numbers on truck orders were “consistent with the recent demand trend and in line with seasonal expectations.” First-quarter figures were strong enough that they “mostly quelled concerns of a rapid decline in demand.” The market for new Class 8 vehicles, FTR said, is “performing slightly above replacement-level orders.”


New orders the prior three months have been averaging about 25,000 tractors. The slowdown reflected in April, FTR said, is “seasonally typical.”

“OEMs continue to fill build slots at a healthy rate,” FTR said. “Although most OEMs saw declining orders, some saw small increases.”

“Despite the month-over-month decline, the fact that orders were up significantly from the April 2023 level indicates that the market is still solid,” Dan Moyer, senior analyst, commercial vehicles, said in the FTR release on its data. Although the freight  market is suffering from “persistent stagnation,” Moyer said trucking companies had not been “deterred” from ordering new trucks.

 Ken Veith, ACT president and its senior analyst, described the freight market as being in a “long bottom” with “lingering market overcapacity” and “dismal” profitability in the first quarter.


But besides that, Veith said, the order books at OEMs are “producing results in-line with expectations.”

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One Comment

  1. Bill Sharpee

    Hmmm… There are lots of new trucks for sale now compared to a year ago, a good number of them already two model years old. Quite a few of these units are at second tier dealer lots with the FET paid which means that they were sold wholesale. Maybe things are not what they say they are.

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John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.