MacKay & Company projects U.S. aftermarket growth despite economic risks
- U.S. Class 6-8 truck aftermarket forecast revised upward to $57.7 billion in 2026, up 4.8% year-over-year with 3.4% CAGR through 2031.
- Freight recession has ended, spurring delayed equipment orders and improving carrier confidence, but multiple economic headwinds persist.
- Energy price volatility, new Federal Reserve leadership strategy and Trump administration trade policies create significant downside risks for long-term planning.
An expanding U.S. truck fleet with slowly rising utilization rates should drive aftermarket growth across the final months of 2026 and into 2027, but economic uncertainty at the national level should check companies from being too bullish about their growth potential in the years ahead, MacKay & Company experts warned industry suppliers during MEMA’s August Pulse webinar on Tuesday.
In a dense presentation covering both segments, the MacKay & Company team of Dr. Bob Dieli and Dave Kalvelage showed exactly how a market can stabilize and present many positive market indicators while still feeling shaky. The freight recession has ended; the weight it put on fleet managers has receded. But batting leadoff Tuesday, Dieli says there’s too many unknowns in the American economy to anticipate the type of recovery a multi-year freight recession could create.
Energy prices have skyrocketed since the dawn of the Iran war. New Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is unlikely to manage the inflation that causes with the same, deliberate method that has defined the Fed for nearly four decades. And trade in the era of President Donald J. Trump is anything but ordinary.
“The principal issue here is the elements that make us think of downside risks continue to dominate,” Dieli says.
Somewhat surprisingly, Dieli believes retail fuel prices will be the most likely economic indicator to forecast in the months ahead. A stall or conclusion to Middle East conflict would almost assuredly slow price inflation, but even if no such ending occurs, Dieli says diesel prices almost perfectly mirror crude oil prices on a slight lag.
“If you look at crude oil prices, you know where diesel prices are going,” he says.
[RELATED: Tariff price hikes masked aftermarket weakness in 2025]
Such a predictive indicator doesn’t yet exist with new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
Dieli says dating back to Alan Greenspan in 1987, the Federal Reserve has long ascribed to a ‘pause and pivot’ strategy before making changes to interest rates. These pauses, which are clearly visible on funds rate historical charts, were the Fed’s way of telling the markets they were about to make a change. Dieli says Warsh doesn’t agree with the practice. The Federal Reserve didn’t change its rate at its last meeting on July 29, but Dieli says the 9-3 vote speaks to dissension within the Fed ranks, making it hard to predict future votes.
“If you grew up in a period with no volatility, it’ll take people a while — another technical term — to get used to trading in that environment,” he says.
As for trade, Dieli says the only certainty is uncertainty. He says President Trump’s decision to annually reconsider the USMCA creates a climate where long-term business planning for regionally integrated economies is nearly impossible. He believes the President will continue enacting tariffs as he always has and says even the removal of the unconstitutional IEEPA tariffs is unlikely to provide global firms any advantages. He jokes the President put ‘Helen Wait’ in charge of refunds, saying, “If you have issue getting a refund, you can go to hell and wait.”
But even with those challenges, the trucking industry is unquestionably in a better position this summer than last year, Kalvelage says. And that sentiment is confirmed by RigDig (owned by Fusable, parent company of TPS), which reported an increase of more than 115,000 pieces of equipment into the carrier population in the second quarter.
The end of the freight recession alone was enough to finally spur carriers to order equipment they had long been delaying, while the relative stability of trade in 2026 against the whirlwind that was 2025 has created a more stable environment for shippers and their carrier partners. Kalvelage says this has allowed the company to boost its 2026 aftermarket forecast slightly upward from where it was at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Dialogue.
Today the company is predicting the U.S. aftermarket for Class 6-8 trucks, trailers and chassis to reach $57.7 billion this year, up 4.8% against last year with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4% from 2027 to 2031.
Kalvelage cites improving year-to-date sales data from industry suppliers, dealers and distributors for the positive revision, as well as steady utilization totals and truck sales gains expected to last well into 2027.
He says there is “minimal volume growth in aftermarket but positive indicators out there.”
