Last year was a perfect storm no one saw coming. Sure, forecasts weren’t all for sunshine and blue skies, but the barrage of economic woes throughout most every business sector kept trucking in a sustained slump and is negatively impacting the aftermarket. Truck Parts & Service’s annual economic outlook talks to industry experts to evaluate how the aftermarket fared in 2008, and what may lie ahead in 2009.
It could be worse.
It may be hard to imagine how, but there were positives in 2008 and there is reason – however tempered – for optimism in 2009.
Overall, the aftermarket did not fare too badly compared to the continued slump in new truck sales and the utter collapse of other sectors and institutions throughout the general economy. Most agree the litany of bad news is not yet over, but perhaps the worst of it is.
In the aftermarket, the entire chain was forced to primarily operate in reactionary mode throughout 2008. Influences beyond its control – commodity prices, the housing market implosion and failures of financial powerhouses, to name a few – all took a heavy toll on trucking and its aftermarket support network. While no one anticipated a robust economic year, no one really predicted what happened either.
“I don’t think our industry is the only one that got blindsided. What had happened happened so quickly, and I think it happened accumulatively, that a number of things came together at the same point in time and it was kind of the perfect storm,” says Stu MacKay, president of MacKay & Company.
“What was unexpected in 2008 was the depth and velocity of the downturn that started after the global financial crisis in the fall,” says John Beering, director of global marketing for Eaton Corporation. “That said, we are now hopeful for recovery to begin in the latter half of 2009.”
