While trailers orders have been extremely strong in 2018, ACT Research reports the industry’s long string of year-over-year net order gains came to an end in June. In its newest State of the Industry: U.S. Trailer Report, ACT Research states net orders of 20,048 trailers were down 1.3 percent year-over-year and off 13 percent month-over-month in June.
“Dry vans were the driving force in the last two months’ performances and solid volume kept that year-over-year improvement streak alive in May,” says Frank Maly, director, CV transportation analysis and research at ACT Research. “It was dry van weakness in June that was responsible for the total industry’s negative y/y posting, while the other nine trailer categories were all in the black year-over year.”
He adds, “Production surged sequentially in June. While build usually increases in an end-of-quarter month, there were also extenuating circumstances last month. Reports of red-tagged units being moved to completion were heard and that shift from work-in-progress to completion artificially increases calculated build rates.”
Additionally, this month’s report also states fleets are experiencing a catch-22 in that they are too busy to retrieve completed units, but having those trailers could help ease their capacity challenges, a trend ACT Research has noted for the past several months, the company says.
