Used trucks

Used truck prices helped Ryder in comparison to last year, but the market is weak going forward.

Finding a used truck in an overheated market is hard, but personal connections can be an answer, whether it’s the local plumber or the chamber of commerce.

Also on the podcast: What the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve means.

A little more than a year ago, Ryder was dealing with too many used vehicles to sell. It is well past that now.

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Used truck prices continued to hit new highs each of the last six months according to ACT Research. Prices will eventually become too much of a burden for small fleets and owner-operators to bear, if they haven’t already.

Iron Truck Services aims to give smaller fleets affordable access to services such as insurance, equipment maintenance, fuel purchasing, truck sales and rentals.

Ryder is a major supplier of used trucks to the market, and its numbers showed a healthy second sales demand in the quarter.

Truck repairs and parts sales covered all the cost of running Rush Enterprises’ dealership network in Q1 as year-over-year profits doubled.

One of the results of the 2017-18 freight market boom was an increase in the cost of operating that held over into a slower 2019 when capacity became abundant. Costs are on the rise once again as carriers struggle to find drivers to capture market share.