NEW YORK — There won’t likely be many truck buyers on dealer lots in early part of 2007, as the so-called pre-buy of heavy equipment is only now winding down, says the transportation market division of economic analysts Bear Stearns.

Preliminary numbers for North American class 8 orders in September came in at 14,300 down 37.6 percent year-to-year. Orders were down sequentially into what is usually the beginning of the normal order season, says the firm.

That means the movement to buy trucks with 2006 engines in advance of strict engine emission mandates starting Jan. 1 ’07, is coming to an end. “We continue to believe that recent months’ strength has been driven by ‘capacity creep’ for pre-mandate trucks and not for vehicles with the new ’07 engines,” the firm states.

On August 31 only 7 percent of the class 8 backlog was slotted for second quarter 2007 and beyond. In effect, only about 4 to 5,000 orders each month have been for ’07 trucks with ’07 engines, according to Bear Stearns.

“We continue to believe that the 2005-06 pre-buy has been larger than might appear on the surface,” says the firm, pointing out the average age of the public truckload fleet has declined from roughly 28 months in 2002 to 17 months at year-end 2005 and projected to fall to 14 months by year-end 2006.

(For a special report on how 2007 truck sales are shaping up, be sure to read today’s lead online story at TodaysTrucking.com titled “Double O-Seven.”)