Volvo Group checked the boxes for higher sales, profits and market share for its trucking business in the second quarter despite ongoing supply chain disruptions.
“Our customers in most regions are benefiting from high transport and infrastructure activity, which continues to drive good demand for our products and services,” Martin Lundstedt, Volvo president and CEO, said in an earnings report.
But order backlogs and lead times for new truck deliveries are long. That is forcing the Goteborg,...
Order-taking discipline by truck manufacturers continued in June, but don’t expect it to become permanent. OEMs depend on making engines, transmissions and aftermarket parts as well as new trucks..
“No one ever got rewarded for not selling trucks,” Kenny Vieth, ACT Research president, told FreightWaves on Wednesday. “Sales have historically been a battle for market share. If I’m vertically integrated, I’m not just selling a truck. I’m selling an engine and a transmission.”
New truck builds are...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/heres-why-truck-manufacturers-current-order-discipline-wont-last
Class 8 truck orders fell to their lowest level in seven months in April. Manufacturers, wary about ongoing supply chain disruptions, held off accepting bookings as they fret over how many trucks they can deliver in 2023.
On a preliminary basis, truck makers accepted 15,400 to 15,800 new orders. That’s according to industry data trackers to ACT Research and FTR Transportation Intelligence. The monthly average had been about 21,300 over the past seven months. On a rolling 12-month basis, Class 8...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/semiconductor-fears-chill-class-8-orders-in-april
Volvo Group posted solid Q1 sales and operating income despite ongoing supply chain interruptions and taking a $423 million charge for suspending its business in Russia.
The Gothenborg, Sweden-based truck, bus and construction equipment maker reported a 12% improvement in net sales to SEK 105.3 billion Swedish Krona ($11.1 billion). Adjusted operating income was SEK 12.7 billion ($1.34 billion). Adjusted operating margin was 12%.
Operating cash flow was negative SEK 5.4 billion because of...
PLYMOUTH, Mich. — Mark Anderson draws a triangle on a piece of paper and labels the three points A, B and C, illustrating how his company choreographs the movement of 4 million cars and trucks a year.
But the pandemic and the supply chain crisis played havoc with the model, creating a huge efficiency problem for the president and CEO of United Road Services.
“We go from point A and we have a plant here and we send trucks this way to point B where there’s a port. And we get trucks there and we go...
Brent Nussbaum and his employee-owned carrier get fewer new Class 8 trucks, but a strong maintenance program is helping keep its older trucks on the road longer.
Nussbaum Transportation doesn’t buy used trucks, so that option to add capacity is off the table. The company was recently named one of the Best Fleets to Drive For by the Truckload Carriers Association and CarriersEdge. It also was inducted into the Best Fleets to Drive For Hall of Fame.
Brent, who became CEO in 2000 succeeding his...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/nussbaum-counts-on-maintenance-with-new-class-8-trucks-a-year-out
Class 8 truck manufacturers are trying to avoid a repeat of canceled and retimed orders in 2021 by slowing Class 8 order intake to a trickle and matching builds to the visibility they have into availability of semiconductors and other hard-to-get parts in an ongoing supply chain crisis.
Underlying demand vastly outpaces the number of preliminary orders tracked in March by ACT Research and FTR Transportation Intelligence, the two firms that get real-time order data from major manufacturers. ACT...
The story of Class 8 truck orders in February can be summed up in the classic Rolling Stones’ lyric: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you’ll find you get what you need” in the exorbitantly priced used market.
Manufacturers kept the lid on how many orders they would accept in February because they don’t know when the supply chain gridlock will ease enough to ensure a steady flow of parts.
And the Russian invasion of Ukraine may worsen the availability of...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/february-class-8-truck-orders-you-cant-always-get-what-you-want
Class 8 truck orders fell in January as manufacturers matched orders to what they could produce while avoiding further swelling of their backlogs.
A lack of visibility into supply chain bottlenecks makes caution the common theme among OEMs. Most are focused on finishing and shipping red-tagged trucks that piled up in inventory in 2021. Demand for new trucks far outstrips supply, a condition unfamiliar to an industry where the opposite is most often true.
Watch now: Recapping 2021 Class 8 truck...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/supply-chain-weakness-hits-january-class-8-truck-orders
Month after month, industry analysts report new Class 8 preliminary and net truck orders, snapshots of an industry in which peaks and valleys come about every two years of an economic cycle.
Preliminary orders don’t take into account orders that a fleet, or a manufacturer, might cancel for any number of reasons. Net orders, which follow the first cut by about 15 days, lock down a better read on what happened. The two numbers directionally correlate. Cancellations are a barometer of how customers...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/anatomy-of-a-truck-order-sometimes-you-just-turn-the-page