Trucking companies ordered 35,600 trucks in May, more than double the orders from the same month a year ago, according to preliminary figures by ACT Research. That leaves manufacturers with an order backlog of more than 200,000 trucks, or 8.4 months of production.
“This is an astonishing rate of order placement,” Kenny Vieth, president of the Columbus, Ind.-based ACT, said Tuesday. “What’s facilitating it is that truckers are absolutely crushing it on freight rates and profitability right now.”
Veith said fleets ordered Class 8 trucks, the rigs that commonly haul goods on highways, at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 475,000 orders in the first five months of this year, the strongest pace ACT has seen since truckers ordered 376,000 rigs during 2006.
A separate report by research group FTR estimated May orders of Class 8 trucks, reached 35,200 units. Truckers have averaged over 40,000 orders over the past six months, the strongest pace the group has seen.
