Peterbilt

Market share gains, growing order backlog and record sales of parts buoy truck maker PACCAR despite lower first-quarter revenue and profits

PACCAR Inc. posted decent first quarter earnings despite shuttering its plants in late March because of the coronavirus pandemic. While truck orders cooled, parts sales set a record as the truck maker tries to build on 81 consecutive profitable years.

Growing awareness of a 12-year-old relief fund for semi-truck drivers is attracting more and bigger donations as the coronavirus pandemic highlights health risks to truckers hauling critical freight.

Major truck manufacturers extend production suspensions as the coronavirus pandemic worsens. J.P. Morgan upgrades PACCAR and holds a neutral rating on Navistar.

All four major heavy-duty truck manufacturers now have suspended production for at least two weeks, with market leaders Daimler Trucks North America and PACCAR Inc. the latest to stop building trucks because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Diesel-electric hybrids get less attention than pure electric Class 8 trucks, but niche leader Hyliion Inc. is selling them to Penske Truck Leasing with partner Dana Inc.’s Spicer Electrified components.

Volvo Trucks North America and its sibling Mack Trucks later this year will allow individual truck drivers to schedule over-the-air updates typically handled by fleet managers.

Swollen inventories of heavy-duty trucks must shrink or manufacturers will need to cut production further to keep the industry order bank from declining further, ACT Research says.

As Daimler and Volvo leverage their global capabilities for battery-powered trucks in California, PACCAR picks Dana and Meritor as systems suppliers for its medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks.

As more of its drivetrain business moves to electrification, Meritor focuses on integrating recent acquisitions TransPower and AxleTech.

After making four investments totaling $12 million in electric truck systems supplier TransPower, Meritor is acquiring the rest of the company.

Add Werner Enterprises to the parade of companies testing battery-powered heavy-duty trucks in California.

Just in time for the holidays, Paccar declared a special dividend of $2.30 a share for stockholders of record by Dec. 20.

Volvo Trucks North America will lay off about 700 workers in January, extending an industry pullback in production to match slowing orders of new Class 8 trucks.

The number of used Class 8 trucks for sale continues to grow as new equipment deliveries drain the backlog created during a 2018 order binge.

The traditional ordering season for new Class 8 trucks opened in October with the highest activity in 11 months. Still, the number of orders placed was the weakest for an October since 2016 — and 51% below October 2018.

The color of the Mack Trucks bulldog carries special meaning. Gold means all of the key components were homemade. Chrome says others’ parts are on board. Now, it comes in black.

Daimler Trucks North America, the industry sales leader, is not sweating the loss of big chunks of heavy- and medium-duty market share trucks through the first nine months this year.

Paccar Inc. delivered 31,000 trucks in the third quarter, helping the parent company of Kenworth Truck Co. , Peterbilt Motor Co. and DAF beat earnings estimates.

Preliminary Class 8 retail sales for September set an all-time record, but large fleet deliveries likely inflated the results that erased the previous record set in December 2006. Meanwhile, the backlog of trucks waiting to be built is falling, which is leading to layoffs..