What a hugely busy week we’ve had. We start with truck orders. Yes, the boom has arrived. About 47,000 Class 8 orders were placed last month — the most in four years. We touch on our two great awards programs for trailer and truck dealers. We shout out Mack and Kenworth on their new trucks, touch on International’s soft 2025 sales, give another update on the tragic collapse of First Brands and how associates are being impacted. Finally, we look at what Trump’s new tariffs could mean and the big trucking shows ahead in the coming weeks.
Lucas: Hey everybody. Lucas here for today’s TPS Weekly News Roundup. Another huge, crazy busy week. Lot of things happening.
I want to start with truck orders. What a huge month February was for truck orders. It looks like the pre-buy has finally arrived. FTR reporting a little over 47,000 units. ACT Research a little over 46,000 units. Both companies saying orders were up over 150% year over year. FTR saying it was the best month since September 2022, ACT saying it’s the eighth best month they’ve ever recorded in more than 44 years of tracking truck orders. So, a huge great month for truck dealers, for manufacturers. Orders finally coming in. It looks like the removal of the Endangerment Finding was huge; the continued consistency of freight and the slow uptick in freight rates is starting to turn. Manufacturers are starting to see the orders they need. Fleets are finally believing they have confidence to put orders in. So, just great news on the truck orders standpoint.
Also, lot of new, exciting trucks to purchase. Mack introduced two new trucks this week at the ConExpo Show. Their new brand new Keystone, which is replacing the Pinnacle, and the all-new fully updated Mack Granite. Check out that story on TPS if you haven’t seen it. Kenworth announced its new C580, which is replacing the C500 that’s being sunset this year. Exciting news there from Kenworth as well.
Also this week, I have to call back to it. I mentioned it last week. We opened the nomination period for our Successful Dealer Award in our Trailblazer Award on Monday. If you haven’t participated in that program — you don’t understand them — the Successful Dealer recognizes North America’s best commercial truck dealers. The Trailblazer Award does the same thing for commercial trailer dealers. Both awards will be presented in October. We have an open nomination period for both awards through the end of May. So, if you’re a manufacturer and you want to nominate your dealer, if you’re a customer you want to nominate your dealer, if you’re an employee and you want to nominate your employer — for whatever reason, please put in some nominations. We accept nominations through May. Then we do an evaluation process of nominees in June. We want to hear from you. We want to know who the best dealers in North America are.
Other news. Traton, International’s parent company, released its 2025 sales totals. Numbers not good as I think you can imagine. As every other OEM has announced over the last couple months. Sales down about 7 to 10% globally; International sales down about 35% year over year, which Traton had announced earlier. They are optimistic for 2026. They do see the opportunity for some slight growth, but a bad year for Traton as it was a bad year, or a weak year, for a lot of the OEMs.
Couple other things. First Brands, that story continues. More than 3,000 people have been laid off across 15 different locations in North America from First Brands’ production facilities. We’ll have more on that story next week. Also, an interesting story about their facilities along the border in Mexico. Mexican labor laws require severance. You can’t just fire someone, lay someone off. First Brands hasn’t paid the severance, so the workers in Mexico are trying to determine this week if they will strike. And one thing they can do to strike is to basically hole up in manufacturing facilities and refuse to leave and refuse to let the parts and products that are in the facilities exit the facilities. So, we’re keeping an eye on that. We’re trying to understand what that means, but it makes it harder for a business like First Brands to sell those facilities because the purchaser in Mexico would be responsible for paying severance to all those employees [since] you’re taking on all that debt, you’re taking on all that additional responsibility. We’re keeping up on that. It’s a little harder to keep up on what’s happening on the Mexican side of the border, but we are trying to learn what’s happening there and what the impact is. Additionally, more about the indictments of their executives and as those legal processes move forward we continue to cover that.
Tariffs. The President Trump announced new tariffs after the IEEPA tariffs were rolled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. He came back the next day, announced a 10% tariff, then he bumped it to 15. We don’t have any more information about the 15%, but the 10% is expected to go into effect any day. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying he expects it to be implemented any day now. One thing you need to know about these tariffs is these are Section 122 tariffs. And without congressional support, they’re only going to last 150 days. So, unless Congress comes in after they’re enacted and says. ‘We want to keep them,’ they’re 150-day tariffs. But it is something that is going to impact your supply chain for the next couple months at the very minimum. Keep up on that.
And then lastly, next week, TPS will be at the Work Truck Show in Indianapolis. The week after that, we’ll be at TMC in Nashville. So a lot more news is going to be coming out. You thought there was news coming out of ConExpo? That’s nothing. We’re going to see a lot more news.
Keep up with TPS. Check out the newsletters. Check out the website. Like and subscribe to these videos. Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.
