In the release of its Commercial Vehicle Dealer Digest, ACT Research reported that, as expected and aligning with preliminary data, North American Class 8 net orders were soft in May, as full 2021 backlogs and as-yet fully opened 2022 order books constrained activity.

“For Class 8, after a torrent of orders from October to March, orders moderated in April, before falling to a nine-month low in May,” said Kenny Vieth, ACT’s President and Senior Analyst. “The order lines on the Dashboard graph illustrate the current rollover in the trend. A drop in the order trend preceded the opening of subsequent years’ orders in each of the last two cycles, with significantly higher orders booked ahead of the second year of the cycle. Given recent historical precedent, we would expect orders to rise materially in coming months.”

Vieth elaborated, “While our expectation is that orders will jump in early Q3, we add two caveats: First, through all but the most recent cycle, OEMs have typically not opened out-year order books until September-October. Second, at a recent conference, an OEM executive indicated that his company was at least contemplating some type of allocation system to best serve all of their customer constituencies in challenging market conditions.”