In the release of its Commercial Vehicle Dealer Digest, ACT Research reported essentially unchanged forecasts from last month—demand remains healthy, production remains constrained, and freight rates and volumes managed to squeak out small improvements compared to August.

According to Kenny Vieth, ACT’s President and Senior Analyst, “We’re hardly at the ‘living on a prayer’ stage when it comes to our outlook, but as the old investing maxim goes: Don’t fight the Fed.” Elaborating, he said, “We believe wage inflation needs to moderate before the Fed can begin turning away from tighter monetary policy. As long as the jobs reports remains strong, the harder it may be to tame wage inflation – which may lead to more-aggressive-for-longer rate hikes and worse than expected economic outcomes.”

He concluded, “As it has been for several months, a mild recession centered in early 2023 remains our base case.”