We’re busy in this week’s recap. First we run through the news from the 2026 ATD Show, including the crowning of Terry Martin as the ATD Truck Dealer of the Year, inauguration of Kevin Holmes as new ATD chairman and President Jacqueline Gelb’s rundown of ATD’s most important priorities on Capitol Hill this year. Then, because it’s also OEM Dealer of the Year season, we shout out Mack, Volvo, Peterbilt and Thermo King’s top dealers, reference recent earnings reports from Cummins and Volvo Group and remind the aftermarket that it’s time to sign up for Heavy Duty Education Week. We also touch on some hot-button stories, like the indictment of prior First Brands executives on fraud charges and a possible law for trailer underride guards, before closing with some useful insights from our most recent TPS MarketPulse industry survey.
Lucas: Hey everyone. Lucas here, back from Las Vegas and the ATD Show and ready to run through this week’s TPS weekly news roundup. Yes, I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday this week at the 2026 ATD Show, the American Truck Dealers Event. Some really great stuff happening at ATD this week.
First I want to start with the ATD Truck Dealer of the Year Award, which is presented by Proceed Software along with Trucks, Parts, Service and on behalf of both of those groups and ATD, we’re thrilled to announce Terry Martin of Martin’s Peterbilt was the winner of the 2026 ATD Truck Dealer of the Year Award. That story is available on the website if you didn't see it, check it out. Really great story about Terry and his career. Other finalists, or the finalist was Ryan Young of Young Trucks. Other nominees were Patrick Chastang of Chestnut Ford and Patrick Jacobs of Carco International. You can read stories about them as well on the website. Four really great dealers nominated and recognized by ATD this week.
Some other things at ATD with this week. The president’s sort of state of the union addressed by Jacqueline Gelb on Wednesday where she talked about key priorities for ATD in 2026. As you can imagine, ATD pretty pleased by what happened in 2025 with a lot of the regulatory rollbacks and changes as it relates to emissions rules. But there’s still a lot to be done. ATD says in 2026, big focus on tariff and trade policy, also Right to Repair, and then FET, which is always a huge priority for ATD. Additionally, a big priority in 2026. New ATD Chair Kevin Holmes also presented yesterday. He was talking about what he wants to do in 2026. He, again, focusing on FET, focusing on the things Jacqueline mentioned, but he’s also very focused on community engagement, industry engagement, getting people across the entirety of the trucking industry and the dealer channel engaged in ATD and making the association as strong as possible. You can check out recaps of those two presentations. David Carson from DTNA gave a 2026 market update. That story’s available as well on the website. So, a lot of really good stuff from ATD.
Some other stuff this week. We had dealer of the year awards from the OEMs. Mack, Volvo, Peterbilt, Thermo King. If you didn’t see any of those stories, check those out on the website. We had some earnings reports. I think Paccar was last week. Volvo was this week. We had Cummins yesterday, so there’s some good earnings reports out there.
Registration for Heavy Duty Education Week, which is CVSN’s big education week in May, has now opened this week. Please register, sign up for that. HDEW is moving from Dallas to Indianapolis, but it will still be held in the middle of May, so if you’re a distributor or a service provider and you’ve got value out of that before, or you want to, be sure to check that out, register for that.
A couple interesting stories. Prior executives or past executives from First Brands have been indicted in a billion dollar fraud scheme. We’re keeping up on that. Really interested to hear what happened there. Also there is a trailer dumping and countervailing investigation the Department of Commerce is doing on trailers produced in China, Mexico, and Canada. That was first announced in November. Preliminary investigations began a couple weeks ago, so we’re keeping an eye on that.
And then one more thing I wanted to jump in. Our TPS MarketPulse report for Q4 and the 2025 year was released on Monday. That might have got lost in the shuffle, but be sure to check that out; some really good stuff there. As you can imagine, about half — more than 50% of dealers, slightly under 50% of aftermarket responders — reported their business was down year over year in 2025, but there’s a lot of hope for 2026. So, be sure to check that out, learn a little bit more about what people in this industry are expecting, what they saw in 2025, and hopes for 2026. Check that out.
Everything else on the website, a lot of really good stuff happening this week. As always, be sure to like and subscribe to these videos. Sign up for the TPS newsletter and have a great weekend. Thank you all. Bye.
