PORTLAND, Ore. (Aug. 2, 2004) — Order books for class 6-8 trucks are filling up fast for 2004, and sales are expected to remain strong through next year and 2006, says the president and CEO of Freightliner LLC, Rainer Schmueckle.

Speaking at a conference call to North American trucking journalists, Schmueckle said premium class 8 orders are sold out until mid-October, while the company will have capacity for medium duty vehicles beginning in mid-September.

While improvements in the overall economy and increased freight movement are the basis for demand growth, Schmueckle said most of the sales to date are fleet replacements — and not necessarily capacity expansion.

For the North American class 8 market, Schmueckle projects total OEM retail sales will total 240,000 units by the end of the year. For the class 6-7 markets, he expects total NAFTA sales to reach between 160,000 and 165,000 units, with the vocational market starting to gain momentum as well.

However, there are some factors actually keeping a lid on the market, such as a driver shortage, fuel price spike, and “significant” shortages of raw material. Schmueckle predicts another 25,000 units, on top of the 240,000, would have been sold if not for the high cost and lack of availability of raw material — specifically steel — on the supplier side.

“We do believe that the raw material shortage both for production parts and replacement parts to a certain extent is holding back the output of many manufacturers,” he said. “As the world economy starts to align and countries like China provide a significant strain on raw material, we may struggle even more to reach the output in 2006, (meaning) the reductions in 2007 could be even graver than what we saw in 2002-2003.”

When asked by Today’s Trucking what the industry is doing to soften the impact of another looming pre-buy wave, Schmueckle said OEMs have learned several lessons from ’02. First they need to better partner with engine makers and expedite the engine-testing phase. He said Freightliner expects to have ’07-compliant vehicles in the hands of fleets “to try out” by the second half of 2005.

Also, he said truck makers are uniting by lobbying the U.S. government to approve incentives for buyers of ’07 engines. He said OEMs — under the guidance of the American Trucking Associations — will take their formal case to Capital Hill by the end of this year or early 2005.

“We believe a package of government incentives will make new ’07 engines more attractive to truck operators and might encourage faster market acceptance,” Schmueckle said. “Such incentives would help, at least initially, to offset the increased purchase and operating costs of the new engines, while at the same time limiting disruption in the truck manufacturing and supply industries.”