January Medium-Duty Sales Jump 5.2% Year Over Year
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U.S. retail sales of medium-duty trucks started off the year with a slight uptick compared with January 2024, according to data from Wards Intelligence.
Classes 4-7 retail truck sales for January increased 5.2% to 19,216 units from 18,273 a year ago, following two months of year-over-year declines. But sequentially, sales fell 14.9% from the 22,586 units reported in December. The second half of the year struggled to keep up with the year-over-year comparisons, while the first half didn’t.
“It’s interesting. On the medium-duty side, we’re still playing catch-up to a degree,” ACT Research Vice President Steve Tam said. “If I look outside of retail sales and look at some of the other indicators, one of the challenges that the medium-duty space has had is it’s played second fiddle to the heavy-duty side of the ledger.”
Tam added that there have been challenges getting components, raw materials and subassemblies on the part of truck manufacturers. But now he suspects the heavy-duty side of the market has slowed down enough to give the medium-duty market a chance to catch up, given the still elevated backlogs and pent-up demand.
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“[The manufacturers are] doing a pretty decent job of it,” Tam said. “But it’s just taking a long time, and you can’t sell it if you haven’t built it. Even though we have what looks like a lot of trucks in inventory, many of those trucks are stuck in the upfit process. So the chassis is done, right, the manufacturer, the OEM, has done its job. But now it’s sent off to get a box put on the back, or a dump bed, or whatever the case may be. And so you’re seeing that process finally come to a culmination.”
Tam noted that retail sales numbers are the key consideration on the heavy-duty side. But that is not so much the case for medium duty because services influence that sector more in addition to retail sales. The services side of the equation has been performing well recently too.
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“There’s still a lot going on in the services portion of the economy,” Tam said. “We have a lot of construction going on, which drives demand for a good portion of the medium-duty market. Whether or not that continues is an excellent question.”
The results again favored the heavier end of the medium-duty space. Class 7 truck sales increased 9.9% year over year to 4,643 units from 4,223. Class 6 sales increased 10.4% to 6,206 units from 5,622. Classes 4 and 5 sales slipped 0.7% to 8,367 units from 8,428.
International Motors sold the most Class 7 trucks in January at 1,820 units. Ford sold the most Class 6 vehicles at 1,638 units and the most in Class 5 at 4,365. Ford also sold the most Class 4 trucks with 878.
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