Our roundup returns this week with a look at a few big transactions – including Dana buying Eaton’s Mobility business, Rush growing in Canada and Snap-on expanding its heavy truck shop offering. We also touch on the sunsetting of some Chevrolet and International work truck models, dive into a new distribution study from MacKay & Company, stay active in court with First Brands and ask for your help on a parts survey.
Lucas: Hey everybody. Lucas here back from paternity leave and excited to jump back into the TPS weekly news roundup.
Yeah, I really very much enjoyed my time here at home with the new baby, but I’m ready to get back to work and I’m ready to tell you what happened in the industry this week.
I’m going to begin with the news that happened, really at the end of last week. We reported it Monday. International and General Motors are discontinuing a variety of work trucks. They had a partnership that started in 2015 for production of some chassis cab trucks and that is ending. The partnership is ending at the end of September trucks will be discontinued. On the General Motors’ side, it’s the Chevy 4500, 5500, 6500 HD. On the International side, it’s the CV series. So if you’re selling those trucks or you’re servicing those trucks, you’re going to start to see less of them here in the years moving forward because the production will stop here at the end of September.
Other news this week, some huge acquisitions. Rush acquired Carrier Truck Centers and their five locations in Ontario expanding the Rush Canadian presence to 20 locations. So, big news there. Eaton announced they will be selling their Mobility group, which includes their trucking business to Dana. That’s expected to close early in 2027, but that’s something they reported earlier in the year that they had intended to spin off that business. They are spinning it off with Dana, so that’s moving forward.
Oh, another piece of news from late last week. Diesel Laptops is being sold to Snap-on, so a huge change there in the parts and service sector in the technology sector and the service garage as Diesel Laptops will come under the Snap-on umbrella. So, some big acquisition news there.
Other news. MacKay & Company released its most recent distribution study, which looks at buying and purchasing trends across the medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicle parts sector. Looking at who’s buying what, whether they’re buying from dealers, independent service garages, parts distributors, engine distributors, etc. Some good data there. About 60% of parts sold according to the MacKay & Company survey are OE genuine parts. I’m also in the process of doing a survey and writing a series of articles on the difference between OE genuine and private label and all-makes brands. So that’s just some good information for the [project] working on. If you haven’t participated in our survey, you can find it in the newsletter, you can find it on the website. We’d love to have your participation. But again, before I go any farther, the MacKay & Company survey is really great; some really great insights on who’s buying what, where they’re buying, how often they’re buying, where people buy genuine, where people choose to buy aftermarket, so check that out.
A couple other things. VIPAR Heavy Duty added a [member] location this week. Daimler announced a software update to meet the new EPA guidance around DEF derates, so check that out. Other news this week. We are in the process of selecting, or we are in the process of engaging with the nominees for our Successful Dealer Award and our Trailblazer award. So we’re communicating with them now. We will be announcing the finalists for those awards in early July.
Also, our Distributor of the Year Award, we are still accepting nominations for that award for the next 12 days or 10 days — through the end of the month. Please make sure you get out and you make nominations for the Distributor of the Year Award.
I think that’s it for this week. Glad to be back. Hope you guys had a great week and a great month while I wasn’t here. I will see you next week. Have a great weekend. Thanks everybody. Bye.
