The sudden and groundbreaking merger of FleetPride and TruckPro leads this week's weekly news roundup. We talk about how the merger will work, who is in charge and what it could mean for the future of the independent parts business. We then touch on Mapping the Market, our new fleet population data series using RigDig carrier data, earnings reports from International, Dana, Rush Enterprises and more, and a great piece on how independent parts and service operations can bolster their training investment to improve their business.
Lucas: Hey everyone. Lucas here with another TPS Weekly News Roundup. Wow. Were you as stunned by the FleetPride/TruckPro merger as I was. I did not see that coming. If you did go buy a lottery ticket, because you were ahead of the game.
FleetPride and TruckPro, the two largest independent aftermarket operations parts operations in North America, are coming together to create a monster 450-location network. That’s basically the same size as most OEM dealer networks. Also 110 service centers, six PDCs. Just creating an absolute monolith in the independent aftermarket. Tom Grieco, who came on as CEO of FleetPride earlier this year, will continue to lead the new operation, which will still be branded FleetPride. TruckPro’s longtime CEO Chuck Broadus is staying on. He will continue to lead the TruckPro operations within FleetPride and will support Greco. But really just a huge piece of news coming out of the aftermarket.
I mean, it’ll be really interesting to see over the next 6-12 months what this does to the aftermarket. What it does to the independent distributor against an entity as large as FleetPride. So, we’ll keep up that on that and we’ll continue to learn more about how that shifts the parts business.
Also this week, I introduced a new series called Mapping the Market, which uses data from RigDig, which is a TPS sister company within Fusable, and looks at changes in the American carrier population quarter over quarter. I looked at carrier population data at the end of Q2 and the end of Q3 to see how the market had shifted. Some interesting facts there. The market grew from a prospect perspective by one half of one percentage point from Q2 to Q3 and 45 of 50 states saw an increase in the number of active prospects or customers.
On the other side of that, though, the actual fleet contracted. Both trucks and trailers were down by more than 1% from Q2 to Q3, which is what we’ve heard in the space over the summer that carriers are pulling equipment out. That capacity is being pulled down to deal with the softer freight markets. Some interesting data there from the new Mapping, the Market feature. The next feature will come out in January and will look at changes from Q3 to Q4 and it’s our hope moving forward that the consistent quarterly data series will really start to identify some trends and changes in the carrier population that can help you in your business.
Then lastly, we had a great piece on training and how aftermarket shops and aftermarket distributors can acquire training and how training can be useful in your business. Had some good comments from HDA Truck Pride, VIPAR Heavy Duty and CVSN. So, if you didn’t see that story on training, check that out.
We had some earnings reports: Rush; International; Dana. There were a few others. Check out those earnings reports. A lot of really great news this week. FleetPride/TruckPro merger is obviously the biggest but some really great stuff from TPS this week.
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Thank you so much for watching. I hope you had a great Halloween. Have a great weekend. We will see you next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.
