We’re live from the 2025 Used Truck Association (UTA) Convention for this week’s roundup. We focus on the status of the used truck sector and vibes from San Diego, what we learned from our third-quarter MarketPulse survey — it was a historically tough quarter for dealers but a surprisingly strong fall for their aftermarket counterparts — what I’ve learned while chatting with readers on the road the last two months and the sudden uptick in growth and acquisition activity in the dealer space.
Lucas: Hey everybody. Lucas here. As you can see, I’m on the road again for this week’s TPS Weekly News Roundup. I’m in San Diego and I’m about to leave the Used Truck Association (UTA) Convention.
Really positive vibes from UTA this year. Obviously not the biggest convention they’ve ever had; not the best year that the used truck market has ever had, but there seems to be a lot of optimism from dealers and from the vendors here that 2026 is going to be a turnaround. Seems to be a belief that the industry has handled 2025 pretty well. The dealers are pretty confident that their business will be able to respond quickly when demand goes up once freight goes up, and really a lot of positive vibes here in in San Diego. So as I leave UTA, I with some good vibes for the used truck market moving forward.
Some other news this week, I want to go to Monday when we announced the results of our Q3 MarketPulse survey, which shows business conditions from the third quarter for dealers and aftermarket responders. If you didn’t see that story yet — lot better vibes from the aftermarket than the dealers in Q3. Dealers rated Q3 as a 5.0 on our 1-to-10 scale where 1 is the worst quarter ever and 10 is the best. That’s the worst quarter we’ve ever seen from dealers in the four years we’ve done our survey. On the other side of that, the aftermarket rated Q3 as a 6.14, which is the best we’ve seen in two years for that channel. So, a lot more hope in the aftermarket or maybe a lot just better results in the aftermarket. As for hope moving forward (I probably shouldn’t have used that word), the aftermarket anticipating a 5.61, so a little bit of a correction in Q4. The dealers pretty much static at 5.17, maybe a slight uptick. But [while] the market hasn’t turned around the aftermarket seems to be doing a little bit better than dealers.
I also had a story on Wednesday called ‘What I’m Hearing,’ which was just taking everything that I’ve learned over the last couple months when I’ve been on all these trips and I’ve been talking to these dealers, to these vendors, to these OEMs, to the service shops and the distributors, the aftermarket businesses, just what people are saying about the space. Where they’re having success, where they’re really struggling, where opportunities are. So, that was kind of just my ‘dump everything I’ve heard about the market into a piece.’ So you could learn about that. Please check that out if you didn’t get the chance.
And then one other thing I want to note. This week we had a lot of movement in the dealer space. We had two acquisitions announced this week. Three other dealers opening new locations. It seems like for whatever reason, November is going to be the month of activity in the dealer channel.
Keep up with all those stories. If you didn’t do it yet, be sure to like and subscribe these videos so you get them every week. Make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter so you never miss a day’s news like what’s happened here at UTA.
Have a great weekend and we will see you next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.
