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--:-- Alex Osola: Sometimes, when I'm driving down the highway, it can feel like there's nothing else on the road but these huge trucks. A lot of them have branding on the side. Retailers like Walmart or Amazon or shipping companies like UPS. But most big trucks whizzing by don't give much indication at all about what's inside. These big rigs aren't just carrying clothes and appliances and toilet paper. They're carrying the raw materials and components for these and other products. Basically, if it needs to be moved around within the U.S., it's probably being moved by truck.
--:-- Alex Osola: Most companies hire trucking companies to do that shipping. And those trucking companies need big enough fleets to meet demand. So you could see how sales of these heavy trucks could be a sign of how much companies need to ship. And so how much the economy is buzzing. It's an indicator certainly of freight activity, and freight activity is an indicator of the sort of general economy. That's my colleague Bob Tita, who covers manufacturing for the journal.
--:-- Bob Tita: Historically, the data do what I say, all the way back to the 1960s. Declines in heavy truck sales often match up to economic contractions. And right now, truck sales aren't looking great. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that in August of this year, the most recent month data is available thanks to the recent government shutdown, heavy truck sales fell almost 20% from the year before, hitting their lowest point since July 2020.
--:-- Bob Tita: More recently, the companies that produce the trucks say their sales are sliding. Daimler Truck, the biggest heavy truck maker in the U.S. by market share, said its North American third-quarter sales fell about 40%. Packer, the second biggest, said its truck sales in the U.S. and Canada during the same period were down 34% from a year earlier. So does this spell bad news for the broader economy, or are other factors complicating this picture?
--:-- Alex Osola: This is a special episode of What's News. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the third episode of our series on alternative economic indicators. In our first two episodes, we discussed what Nevada's employment rate and the price of copper are telling us about different aspects of the U economy Today we turning to heavy truck sales as a gauge of the U manufacturing sector and of the economy at large To learn more I first started by sitting down with my colleague Bob Tida.
--:-- Alex Osola: So we're talking today about heavy trucks. Had you heard of heavy truck orders or sales as an economic indicator before?
--:-- Bob Tita: Sure. It's an indicator certainly of freight activity and freight activity is an indicator of the sort of general economy when more things are being shipped. Generally, that means more things are being bought and consumed. So there certainly is a relationship.
--:-- Bob Tita: And is the converse also true that when there's a decline in heavy truck sales or orders, then there's a decline in manufacturing output and freight activity?
--:-- Bob Tita: Generally, yes, that's certainly true. And we have seen that in recent months, certainly, when we've had some pretty weak manufacturing activity. And that's been reflected in demand for trucks and truck services.
--:-- Alex Osola: Right. There are two different numbers here that have sort of come up in my reporting, truck sales and truck orders. Can you just break down what each of those means and how that tracks to the broader U.S. economy?
--:-- Bob Tita: Truck sales are generally end users and truck orders are generally what those end users do when they buy trucks. You order them. So a lot of what actually gets tracked very closely are truck orders because it's an indication of truck sales. Trucking companies generally don't buy trucks until they see freight rates and demand for freight services going up.
--:-- Bob Tita: So a trucking company typically wouldn't buy more trucks because they think they're going to have more business six months from now. They generally buy trucks in an improving or a stronger market. Although lately, truck orders have been very weak and there's inventories and dealers of unsold trucks. So there's high inventory, which is also an indication of weak sales.
--:-- Alex Osola: So orders have been down and inventories have been high. So orders for this year have been falling. What are some of the reasons why?
--:-- Bob Tita: Part of it is just the weakness in manufacturing, but some of it is also higher operating costs for trucks themselves. The price has gone up because of things like tariffs and the cost of insurance has gone up. So the sort of operating cost for trucks has gone up, which makes trucking companies less interested in buying them.
--:-- Bob Tita: So the profit margins from freight hauling are pretty subdued this year. So if truck orders are down right now what does that tell us about the current economy Well it sort of an indicator that there a somewhat of a slowness in the economy particularly in manufacturing of durable goods Some of that is also an indication of the effects of inflation. Higher costs for many things. People buy less. So demand is down and that's reflected in cargo and freight activity.
--:-- Alex Osola: That was Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Tita. Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you.
--:-- Alex Osola: Coming up, from tariffs to environmental rules, we dig into the other factors that might be affecting the relationship between heavy truck sales and the broader economy. That's after the break.
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--:-- Alex Osola: At Constellation, we bring the energy, powering America's growing economy every minute, every day. As the nation's largest producer of clean and reliable American-made energy, Constellation is wherever you are. U.S. heavy truck sales have been falling, and that might be saying something about how the overall economy is doing. But are there other factors that might be clouding that signal?
--:-- Alex Osola: I talked about it with Avery Weiss, vice president of trucking at data analysis and forecasting firm FDR Transportation Intelligence. One big question I had for him was about the impact of 25% tariffs that President Trump announced on heavy trucks starting November 1st.
--:-- Avery Weiss: It's not as simple as saying there's a 25% tariff on all trucks based on the imported value. What it comes out to is a lot less significant in terms of cost because there are essentially no heavy-duty trucks that are imported from anywhere other than Mexico. So those trucks come under the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, and under the tariff imposed on November 1st, those trucks are tariffed only for the non-U.S. content.
--:-- Avery Weiss: That substantially reduces the amount of the tariff because a lot of the components that go into trucks that are assembled in Mexico come from the U.S. Now, there's also going to be a tariff on key components, things like engines, transmissions, chassis, tires, and so on. But those are being put on hold for now until there's a process for determining what the U.S. content of those are.
--:-- Alex Osola: All in all, it's not certainly as bad for purchasers of trucks as it could have been. Rather than being a 25% tariff on the full imported value, it probably comes out to something considerably less than 10%. That is still a significant amount of money but all in all it definitely could have been worse
--:-- Avery Weiss: What are some other potential factors here Putting aside tariffs Some things that can skew it is also environmental regulation policy or emissions regulation policy There is a rule currently in place to have a technology change at the beginning of 2027. But there's also a lot of uncertainty over what exactly the Trump administration is going to do regarding that rule.
--:-- Avery Weiss: We're barely more than a year out from that rule. By now, most trucking companies and private fleets would be starting to gear up to order more trucks so that they didn't have to pay more for those 2027 model year trucks. But the Trump administration has signaled they're reconsidering it, but they haven't done anything definitive. So that leaves everybody in a real sort of quandary. It's like, are we going to have an increased cost in trucks? And in a lot of cases, the truck manufacturers have already invested the R&D, in a lot of cases, even the production tooling to meet those emissions requirements have already incurred those costs.
--:-- Alex Osola: And they, of course, want to be paid back. So tariffs aren't the only thing. Environmental regulation is another big one.
--:-- Avery Weiss: So based on the data, where do you think the U.S. economy is going? Like, where would you place your bet? Up, down, middle? Up meaning growth is where we are. Now, that's all relative, right? I mean, 1% growth is growth, but I don't think most people would look at 1% GDP growth as anything to get excited about.
--:-- Avery Weiss: And really, that's kind of the range we're at. We're sort of between a 1% and 2% growth. As we look ahead, we do see a little bit of softness in this quarter and next quarter, due somewhat to a little bit of a softening as we get back to normalization. We are relatively positive. We don't expect a recession. We don't, however, expect anything very strong either, at least not until we get into 2027.
--:-- Alex Osola: That was Avery Weiss, Vice President of Trucking for FTR Transportation Intelligence. Today's show is produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Jana Heron. For the final installment of our Alternative Economic Indicator series, we're taking a look at liquor sales and what they can tell us about the state of the economy. That'll be in your What's New speed on Wednesday. I'm Alex Osola, and we'll be back this evening with our regular show. Until then, thanks for listening.
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