{"id":46556,"date":"2019-06-06T06:47:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T11:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46556"},"modified":"2019-06-06T06:47:24","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T11:47:24","slug":"what-collapsing-orders-for-heavy-trucks-down-71-from-a-year-ago-say-about-the-u-turn-in-trucking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46556","title":{"rendered":"What Collapsing Orders for Heavy Trucks \u2013 Down 71% from a Year Ago \u2013 Say about the U-Turn in Trucking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2019\/06\/05\/what-collapsing-class-8-truck-orders-down-71-from-year-ago-say-about-the-u-turn-in-trucking\/\">What Collapsing Orders for Heavy Trucks \u2013 Down 71% from a Year Ago \u2013 Say about the U-Turn in Trucking <\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u201cWhen times are tough, the thinking switches to the short-term. Many fleets are just fighting for survival.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Orders for Class-8 trucks \u2013 the heavy trucks that haul a large part of the goods-based economy across the US \u2013 plunged by 71% in May compared to May last year, to \u2014 as&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ftrintel.com\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">FTR Transportation Intelligence<\/a>&nbsp;called it this afternoon \u2014 a \u201cchilly 10,400\u201d orders. It was \u201cthe lowest volume for Class 8 orders since July 2016 and the weakest month of May since 2009,\u201d FTR said in the statement (data via FTR):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/US-class-8-truck-orders-FTR-2019-05-.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-51249\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This comes after orders had already plunged year-over-year by 52% in April, 67% in March, 58% in February and January, and 43% in December. It was the seventh month in a row of year-over-year declines (data via FTR):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/US-class-8-truck-orders-yoy-change-FTR-2019-05.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-51250\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><ins><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cyclical nature of the industry is legendary. Trucking companies get exuberant when capacity tightens and freight rates soar \u2013 which they did in late 2017, that in 2018 turned into an outright capacity shortage and a driver shortage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This boom was fueled in part by a decision in Corporate America to build up inventories in the US to front-run potential import tariffs. This put additional pressure on trucking capacity, and on freight rates. And it motivated trucking companies to order new equipment to meet demand. Given the capacity pressure at the time, they tried to get the orders in ahead of the others, and this created a phenomenal boom in orders \u2014 and at truck manufacturers, historic order backlogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then the other part of the cycle begins. As these new trucks enter service, capacity rises, taking pressure of the system. This was expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Collapsing Orders for Heavy Trucks \u2013 Down 71% from a Year Ago \u2013 Say about the U-Turn in Trucking \u201cWhen times are tough, the thinking switches to the short-term. Many fleets are just fighting for survival.\u201d Orders for Class-8 trucks \u2013 the heavy trucks that haul a large part of the goods-based economy across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26019,1263,10303,4254],"class_list":["post-46556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-heavy-trucks","tag-transportation","tag-trucking","tag-wolf-richter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46557,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46556\/revisions\/46557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}