Class 8 booked 16,770 net new orders in November, while Classes 5-7 posted 18,850 net orders. These results were published in the latest State of the Industry report, recently released by ACT Research Co. (ACT). The report covers Classes 5 through 8 vehicles for the North American market.

Kenny Vieth, ACT’s President and Senior Analyst, noted that lingering weakness in the industrial economy coupled with strong capacity additions in 2015 have tilted the supply-demand equilibrium, driving broad-based weakness across markets in November and pushing Class 8 net orders to a volume last seen in Q3’12. He said, “In November, NA net orders were 16,772 units, which translates to 15,200 units on a seasonally-adjusted basis. This is sharply below the prevailing SA order trend of ~23,000 units per month that was in place from April to October.” Vieth added, “Despite the weakness that has gathered into year’s end, we expect that the industry will build over 320k units in 2015. And while backlogs will be smaller at the end of 2015 versus 2014, that backlog is expected to be the third largest year-ending backlog in a decade.”

Concerning medium duty, Vieth said, “Healthy consumer balance sheets, rising new home construction, improved state and local government budgets, and an absence of overbuying have the medium-duty segment well positioned for continued modest growth in 2016. Collectively the Classes 5-7 market experienced another healthy month, with orders up 7% y/y.” He added, “Classes 6-7 vehicles, up 10% y/y, were responsible for the lion’s share of November’s MD market gains.”

ACT is the leading publisher of new and used commercial vehicle (CV) industry data, market analysis and forecasting services for the North American market, as well as the U.S. tractor-trailer market and the China CV market. ACT’s CV services are used by all major North American truck and trailer manufacturers and their suppliers, and worldwide banking and investment companies.