COLUMBUS, IN – North American truckers ordered just over 24,600 Class 8 trucks in March 2015, down from the same time last year, according to industry analysts at ACT research. The drop in Class 8 trucks is due to a seven-month backlog of unbuilt orders from last year, ACT claims.

But Class 5-7 orders were up, posting the sixth year-over-year gain in the past seven months with 20,800 orders. While Class 8 orders have been down to start 2015, the seasonally adjusted numbers are still predicting a 300,000 unit rate for the year. 

“A 300,000 unit annualized rate of order placement represents solid support for an industry already sitting on nearly seven months of unbuilt orders,” said Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst at ACT Research.  “Despite the softness in the actual data, on a seasonally adjusted basis, Class 8 retail sales in Q1 occurred at a strong 335,000 unit SAAR [Seasonally adjusted annual rate].”

 “Of those six beats, five were double digit gains including a 14-percent order improvement [in the medium-duty truck market] in March versus last year,” Vieth said. “March represented the fourth best order month since the second half of 2006.”