In this roundup we start with great news — a huge bump in truck tonnage. Then we cover the continued court battles over EPA regulations, Rush Enterprises’ new COO, NTDA’s push for floor plan financing legislation and Fullbay’s latest technician and service shop survey. Finally, we close with a deserved plug for Heavy Duty Education Week and an update on the First Brands scandal — how the company is attempting to sell its brands while prosecutors lay out their case against the company's past executives.
Lucas: Hey everyone. Lucas here this week for today’s TPS weekly news roundup and I’m going to start today with some exciting news.
Truck tonnage reached its highest level in three years in February, jumping up 2.6% from January to February according to ATA’s seasonally adjusted tonnage index. Now this is the best year over year monthly jump since October of 2022. ATA does note that because tonnage has been so low and depressed over the last couple years that the huge jump doesn’t necessarily mean that the recession is over and that freight is bouncing back, but it does show the start of an uptick and hopefully a couple more good months compounded on top of this could indicate that the market is finally turned around. So, a good sign for truck tonnage.
Moving forward, 24 states, led by California and Massachusetts, are suing the EPA over its decision to revoke the Endangerment Finding. The Endangerment Finding was the scientific bedrock that was used for greenhouse gas regulations. EPA rescinded that in February. They said they don’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The states say they do and that EPA is abandoning its responsibility to do so. So, that court case will move forward. We will follow that.
Also, Rush got a new COO this week. Jason Wilder, the previous COO stepping down for personal reasons. Jody Pollard, longtime VP across the Rush network is stepping into the COO role. Congratulations to Jody. Best of luck Jason in your endeavors.
NTDA is pushing a floor plan deduction bill, a bipartisan bill in Congress and is looking for support from the trailer dealer community. The bill is H.R. 7944, and this would extend Section 163 floor plan deduction financing, which is available for trucks and tractors and the bill would extend that out for trailers. If you’re a trailer dealer, definitely support that. Reach out to your congressman. It’s a bipartisan bill. Say that it is important to push that forward to support the trailer dealer industry.
Couple other things. Fullbay released its annual State of Heavy-Duty Repair report, which is a survey they do of their audience and thousands of service shops across the industry. Some interesting stats there: 57% of heavy-duty service shops believe they are understaffed. Additionally, 5% of service shops believe it takes them at least 12 months to fill a technician role. Lots of really other illuminating data from that survey. There’s a story on the website, you can check that out, you can download the full survey, please do that.
Next Heavy Duty Education Week. If you haven’t signed up now and you’re an independent parts and service provider, please do so. [HDEW] is CVSN’s big weekly training bash. It’ll be in Indianapolis in May. If you don’t know what HDEW is, it used to be the Distributor Training Expo, which you sent your people to in Atlanta or Dallas. It is still the Distributor Training Expo. That is still the main aspect of [HDEW], but there also is some soft skills training, Gen Next, Gen First certification programs. If you haven’t signed your people up for that yet and you’re an independent parts and service shop, please do so. It’s a wonderful training event. I highly recommend you send your people.
And then lastly, some updates in the First Brands case. They are in the process of selling, um, several of their product lines, including FRAM, Luber-finer, Champion Labs. There are some hurdles they have to cross to complete these sales, but they are moving forward. Also, we had a really, really good story in the middle of the week about some court documents that were released in discovery in the criminal case against previous CEO and founder Patrick James and the other executives that have been indicted in this case. Check that story out. Really scary some of the things that they were spending their money on and how they were performing fraud to make some money through First Brands. Obviously, this is alleged, but some really interesting, meaty stuff there in the First Brands case. So check that out. All those stories are on the website.
Have a great weekend. Be sure to like and subscribe to these videos. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter. We will see you next week. Thanks everybody. Bye.
