Medium- and heavy-duty truck sales continued to show gains in March compared to last year’s numbers, marking the third straight month of sales increases, according to Wards AutoInfoBank. Last month’s Class 8 sales rose 5.5% over 2009 and 9.2% for the first quarter. Classes 4 through 8 sales for March were up 10.6% over 2009 and 7.2% for the quarter.
Daimler Trucks North America led Class 8 volumes with 3,507 units, almost all from its Freightliner brand. By comparison, it sold 3,116 Class 8 trucks in March 2009. On a percentage basis, Mack Trucks showed the largest improvement with an 83.3% year-over-year gain in March, selling 831 Class 8 trucks this year compared to 436 in 2009.
DTNA also led first quarter Class 8 volumes with 8,481 units this year compared to 7,776 in 2009. In fact all heavy-truck OEMs recorded heavy-duty sales gains for the first quarter, although International just made it into the black with a 0.6% improvement over 2009.
U.S. medium-duty sales, which Ward’s defines as Classes 4 though 7, totaled 27,285 trucks for the first quarter, a 5.5% increase over the 25,869 sold in Q1 ’09.
In Canada, Class 8 sales also showed a large year over year increase in March, jumping 14% on a volume of 1,699 trucks, and 8.5% for the first quarter with 3,917 trucks sold. Canada’s medium-duty truck sales, however, declined sharply in March (-27.6%) and for the quarter (-22.2%) over 2009.
