Latin-Kasper breaks down truck equipment outlook
Jan 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Rick Weber
What is the truck equipment market outlook for 2003?
Stephen Latin-Kasper, the NTEA's director of market data & research, will provide an analysis in his presentation on Sunday, March 2, from 1:30 pm-2:45 pm.
Latin-Kasper will review current data on truck sales and end-use markets with analyses from the NTEA's staff economist and give his views on where the truck equipment market is headed and what role the US and international economies play in the short term and long term.
Latin-Kasper gives these positive forecasts for the market: the glut will be cleaned up; the interest rates remain low; and trade is improving.
He gives these negatives: the threat of terrorism still is eroding consumer confidence; there are questions about capital expenditures, productivity, and employment.
The two-year decline in commercial truck shipments was halted in 2002, with shipments expected to reach $58.263 billion, a 2.5% gain over $56.842 in 2001. Truck equipment shipments, however, fell for the third straight year — the total of $25.856 billion represented a decline of 7.1% after drops of 5.4% and 5.9% in the previous two years.
Through July, Class 2 was the only one to experience an increase — 5.8%, compared to declines of 31.6% in Class 4 and 22.7% in Class 7. The most modest decline was seen in Class 8 (5.2%).
Medium-truck sales were well above production totals, but both were falling throughout the first half of 2002 after peaking midway through 2000. Heavy-truck sales increased slightly over the beginning of 2002 and were even with production totals.
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