JANUARY 23, 2019 Vol. 16 No. 2

Well, the year started off with a bang, what with exciting announcements at the CES show in Las Vegas, as I reported last time out. All that was backed up by a very positive outlook for truck sales and predictions that 2019 wouldn’t be too far off last year’s torrid pace.

Clearly, 2018 was all about plug-in electric trucks news-wise with some significant developments on the hydrogen fuel-cell front as well, but let’s look at the market at large and then at some of the more conventional new offerings that we’ll see this year.

Volvo Trucks North America president Peter Voorhoeve says truck sales continue to ride a “very, very good wave”, and projects North American class 8 sales could push marginally above 300,000 units when final 2018 results are tallied.

“THE STRENGTH WILL CONTINUE in 2019,” he added in a recent briefing to industry journalists, setting projections at 310,000 trucks. Between 1990 and 2017, annual sales averaged 226,445 trucks so we’re in pretty nice shape. “I think that will continue to go upwards,” he said, while allowing that component availability is an issue for all OEMs.

Volvo Trucks set global sales records in the third quarter of 2018. Order intakes were up 44% over 2017, new truck deliveries surged 17%, parts sales were up 21%, and net sales were up 25%. Good numbers.

Daimler Trucks North America tells a similar story. It’s coming off a record year in truck sales, and expects the market to remain strong for months to come before moderating in the second half of 2019.

“We had record sales with more than half a million trucks sold,” Daimler commercial vehicles chief Martin Daum announced earlier this month. Sales in North America were particularly strong.

ROGER NIELSEN, CEO AT DTNA, refers to full order boards and production levels that haven’t been seen in a decade. The U.S. and Canada alone represented 165,000 of Daimler’s class 6-8 truck sales in 2018, up 18% over the previous year. Western Star’s numbers were also up 18%.

Class 8 trucks represented 110,000 of the U.S. and Canadian units, up 26% over 2017, and half of these trucks were new Cascadias that will benefit from a series of upgrades for the 2020 model year. Daimler has sold or booked orders for 145,000 new Cascadias since the truck was introduced in 2017.

“We do expect some moderation and normalization in the second half of the year,” Nielsen said of the market to come.

A BREAKOUT YEAR FOR NAVISTAR, that was 2018, according to Troy Clarke, chairman, president and CEO. It was even better than for the industry at large if you look at the numbers.