In this week’s roundup we talk new truck demand, and how it continues to rise. We also note the challenge the market uptick could create for OEMs who must suddenly scale up production and supply chains. We report earnings from Cummins, Daimler and more, talk about good news for First Brands’ employees; a busy HDA Truck Pride meeting, encourage your participation in a survey on private label parts and nominating great businesses for our truck and trailer dealer award programs.
Lucas: Hey everybody. Lucas here for today’s TPS weekly news roundup. A lot of stuff, let’s get started.
I’m going to begin with Class 8 truck orders. More good news in April. Orders up about 200% year over year, around 25,000 units in the month of April, according to ACT Research and FTR. Now that is down from March, but it was expected to be down from March because we are now cycling into the low point in the order season. But still up 200% year over year is fantastic. Third straight month we’ve been up at least 140% year over year. There are some concerns longer term. When orders go up like this at this incredible rate, manufacturers have to race to increase production, increase supply chain capacity. So there are some concerns there on how quickly and how efficiently that can be done moving forward. You can check out our story for more information there, but generally, really good news for truck dealers and OEMs that truck orders are really starting to boom.
Other stuff this week, we got news in the middle of the week that First Brands is delaying layoffs for about 750 employees across locations in Ohio and Illinois. They’re trying to sell some of their business or sell more of their business, so they’re delaying those layoffs with the hopes that they can complete the sales and those employees can stay employed at the new business that they’re working to sell to. Some good news there. Hopefully that sale goes through by the end of the month and those employees keep their jobs.
The HDA Truck Pride meeting was last week in San Diego. If you didn’t get the chance to go, we’ve got a really detailed recap on the website. You can check that out. Sounds like another great event by HDA Truck Ride. Another great opportunity for suppliers and aftermarket distributors to get together and talk about the industry.
Some are more earnings reports this week. Cummins and Daimler are the biggest, but we also had a roundup of all the earnings reports from the public businesses in our industry. Check that out.
I’m working on a survey on private label and white box products and their continued adoption, or if there is continued adoption, over the last couple of years. There’s a survey. We put it out in the newsletter and on the website this week. If you didn’t see it, there’ll be a link to it here below this video, but please check that out.
Our award programs — a little than three weeks left to nominate dealers for the Successful Dealer Award and our Trailblazer Award. Successful Dealer for the truck dealers, Trailblazer for the trailer dealers. If you know a great dealer, you think there’s a great dealer that deserves recognition, please nominate them here before the end of the month. The Distributor of the Year program we run until the end of June, so we’ve got another month to nominate aftermarket distributors, but we would love to hear from you for any one of those three programs.
And then lastly, these videos are going go on a hiatus for about a month. My wife’s about to have a baby. Really exciting, but it could be any day. I don’t know how many more of these videos I’m going to be able to do, so I’m going to just pause here and then I will bring back the, the weekly news roundup when I return from my paternity leave. Really excited about that and just not going to be able to do videos for a while.
Everything we talked about today, you can find it on the newsletter, you can find it on the website, it’s on social media. It’s wherever you can go, wherever you can find.
Please like and subscribe to these videos. You won’t see them for a couple weeks like I said, but when they come back, you’ll make sure you see them immediately. Have a great weekend and we will talk to you in a couple weeks. Thanks everybody. Bye.
