When it comes to the new truck market, there may be no better indicator of future performance—and visualization of the market’s cyclical nature—than Commercial Carrier Journal’s (CCJ) MarketPulse survey.
CCJ’s MarketPulse is a monthly survey of fleet decision makers that seeks to uncover future buying plans among the North American carrier population. Responders must choose between four purchasing options: to increase the size of their fleet; decrease the size of their fleet, replace aging equipment but keep fleet size the same; or make no changes to their fleet.
In the survey data released this week, CCJ shows how those responses have fluctuated month-over-month for the last seven years.
For carriers with more than 100 power units, increasing fleet size and replacing aging equipment regularly battle for the most common response. The latter first eclipsed the former in August 2012—a period most dealers should remember as especially soft in the new truck market—and remained the preferred option for large carriers for nearly a year, peaking as the top response for 60.3 percent for large fleets in December 2012.
Fleet purchased sentiment ticked up the following month (corresponding with most fleets annual ordering habits) but unlike 2012 the increase was not short lived. By May 2013 the number of fleets planning to expand equaled the number planning to simply replace (43.1 percent apiece), and just four months after that, expansion took over the top spot in MarketPulse’s monthly survey, 47.0 to 42.4 percent, over replacement demand.
Not surprisingly, the new truck order market boomed around this time. FTR reported preliminary September 2013 orders at 19,777 units, a 29 percent year-over-year increase, and the market hit a two-year order high a month later.
MarketPulse results and truck orders trended this way together for several months. Two-thirds of large fleets responding to CCJ’s March 2015 MarketPulse survey claimed they were looking to expand, and that sentiment was followed almost immediately by a string of huge sales months.
