Recession?

drkelly

drkelly

Dipstick who put two vehicles on jack stands
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Location
Oak Ridge/Stokesdale, NC
Anyone seeing a drop in sales/service in the industry that you work in?

I work for a heavy truck company. There were 308k class 8 trucks sold in 2024. The forecast for 2025 is 275k trucks.
 
I'd be curious to see how the data REALLY looks in regards to your situation. For instance, in the fire service, their delivery numbers for apparatus look great. What they're not showing is that these trucks are on at least an 18 month waiting list if you're ordering custom. If you order a "stock" truck, it's closer to 8-12 months. Pierce is trying to crank out 150 trucks a month. What's taken a toll more is the consolidation or shuttering of manufacturers.

Not really relevant, but there is a problem when we bought an apparatus in 2022 for $600K. That same blueprint was submitted in 2023 with less options than in 2022, and the price jumped to $900K. Our leadership was focused on the price and ordered a "stock" truck because of our fleet fund and budget. My main retort was, "The prices aren't going down, and we HAVE to replace them. Pony up and hit the taxpayers like everything else does."
 
maulcruiser said:
I'd be curious to see how the data REALLY looks in regards to your situation. For instance, in the fire service, their delivery numbers for apparatus look great. What they're not showing is that these trucks are on at least an 18 month waiting list if you're ordering custom. If you order a "stock" truck, it's closer to 8-12 months. Pierce is trying to crank out 150 trucks a month. What's taken a toll more is the consolidation or shuttering of manufacturers.

Not really relevant, but there is a problem when we bought an apparatus in 2022 for $600K. That same blueprint was submitted in 2023 with less options than in 2022, and the price jumped to $900K. Our leadership was focused on the price and ordered a "stock" truck because of our fleet fund and budget. My main retort was, "The prices aren't going down, and we HAVE to replace them. Pony up and hit the taxpayers like everything else does."
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You answered your own question. Private industry can't just force through price increases (increased taxes in your case) with no repercussions. Fire truck manufacturers are in so tight with NFPA they have a unique ability to charge what they want and to work in planned obsolescence so that you have to buy a new one of their products every few years.
 
maulcruiser said:
I'd be curious to see how the data REALLY looks in regards to your situation. For instance, in the fire service, their delivery numbers for apparatus look great. What they're not showing is that these trucks are on at least an 18 month waiting list if you're ordering custom. If you order a "stock" truck, it's closer to 8-12 months. Pierce is trying to crank out 150 trucks a month. What's taken a toll more is the consolidation or shuttering of manufacturers.

Not really relevant, but there is a problem when we bought an apparatus in 2022 for $600K. That same blueprint was submitted in 2023 with less options than in 2022, and the price jumped to $900K. Our leadership was focused on the price and ordered a "stock" truck because of our fleet fund and budget. My main retort was, "The prices aren't going down, and we HAVE to replace them. Pony up and hit the taxpayers like everything else does."
Click to expand...

Who tf is building your trucks in 18 months? We have three on order, 44 to 48 month wait time. Raleigh has had to order stock trucks twice from two different manufacturers because lead times are so long.

Duane
 
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maulcruiser said:
I'd be curious to see how the data REALLY looks in regards to your situation. For instance, in the fire service, their delivery numbers for apparatus look great. What they're not showing is that these trucks are on at least an 18 month waiting list if you're ordering custom. If you order a "stock" truck, it's closer to 8-12 months. Pierce is trying to crank out 150 trucks a month. What's taken a toll more is the consolidation or shuttering of manufacturers.
Click to expand...
CLRracer said:
Who tf is building your trucks in 18 months? We have three on order, 44 to 48 month wait time. Raleigh has had to order stock trucks twice from two different manufacturers because lead times are so long.
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Honest question: What is causing the requirement to replace the old trucks?
 
Wow... Damn expensive trucks. I guess they know they will get bought so can charge whatever? On a recession side of things in trucking rates are all over right now. No idea what will happen here. Supposedly it will cause some companies to fail but as far as I'm seeing there needs to be more drivers and less companies. JMHO.
 
I work for a big box retailer and it's definitely slow and slowing down. However there has been some public, non tariff issues related to that, but they are forecasting a slow year. We have been in reduced hours longer than usual.
 
I work in the injection mold industry, we have been a little slow since end of Nov. We are hearing rumblings of increased work due to China tariffs on imported molds. (which is a lot of them). So hopefully that turns it around.
Seems there is a lot of people holding on to money and not spending right now because of how weird things are.
 
jeepinmatt said:
Honest question: What is causing the requirement to replace the old trucks?
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Im not as in the loop as I used to be, but maintenance costs and downtime are (or were) the two biggest factors for us. Age and mileage are also big factors. Another is changes in operation. Our last rescue got to the point it was out of service almost as much as it was in service and parts were hard to get because of "covid supply issues." It was also an engine that we converted to a rescue, so it was severely limited in space (engines carry water, rescues are giant tool boxes). We bought an engine to replace the engine we converted to a rescue, then ordered a rescue because we knew the converted engine wasn't a long term solution.

Now with four year wait times, we're almost playing a "what if" game. Sure everything is working fine now, but will it be in four years? What if we wreck a truck? How much more expensive will the new truck be in four years, and will that wait time be longer or shorter?

Duane
 
maulcruiser said:
I'd be curious to see how the data REALLY looks in regards to your situation.
Click to expand...
308k to 275k is about an 11% reduction in sales. We just had our quarterly meeting and sales for the first quarter were inline with that number.
 
CLRracer said:
Who tf is building your trucks in 18 months? We have three on order, 44 to 48 month wait time. Raleigh has had to order stock trucks twice from two different manufacturers because lead times are so long.

Duane
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I'm really curious what is going on with this market.
I'd think if the supply chain is so backed up and there is so much demand for a thing that is domestically made, this would be a prime area for manufacturing growth, enough to give ol' Trump a stiffy... completely outside of all the tariff shenanigans.
IOW why tf doesn't the producers hire more people, increase capacity or other companies get going to fill the need?
 
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CLRracer said:
Who tf is building your trucks in 18 months? We have three on order, 44 to 48 month wait time. Raleigh has had to order stock trucks twice from two different manufacturers because lead times are so long.

Duane
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We get all of our current apparatus through Pierce. That's the lead time for our engines. When we order our aerials and rescue, we're looking at times similar to that.

jeepinmatt said:
Honest question: What is causing the requirement to replace the old trucks?
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The service life of the trucks. Engines are designed to have a 25 year service life, while aerials are 30 years. The aerial sitting in the bay right now is a 1997 model and is a reserve. Our 2012 aerial is being repaired...again.
 
maulcruiser said:
We get all of our current apparatus through Pierce. That's the lead time for our engines. When we order our aerials and rescue, we're looking at times similar to that.



The service life of the trucks. Engines are designed to have a 25 year service life, while aerials are 30 years. The aerial sitting in the bay right now is a 1997 model and is a reserve. Our 2012 aerial is being repaired...again.
Click to expand...
Maybe its different out east. It seems like the departments around here get a new truck every 3-4 years, and have 3-4 trucks.
 
maulcruiser said:
We get all of our current apparatus through Pierce. That's the lead time for our engines. When we order our aerials and rescue, we're looking at times similar to that.



The service life of the trucks. Engines are designed to have a 25 year service life, while aerials are 30 years. The aerial sitting in the bay right now is a 1997 model and is a reserve. Our 2012 aerial is being repaired...again.
Click to expand...

Ours are Pierce too. I wonder why your lead time is so much shorter than everyone else. I understand bigger departments get better service, but 18mo is most definitely not the norm anymore.

Duane
 
ghost said:
I'd hate to see the certification process on that equipment.
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It might look good on paper, but that just means they have bigger, more expensive problems šŸ¤¦ā€ā™‚ļøšŸ˜‚

Duane
 
maulcruiser said:
We get all of our current apparatus through Pierce. That's the lead time for our engines. When we order our aerials and rescue, we're looking at times similar to that.



The service life of the trucks. Engines are designed to have a 25 year service life, while aerials are 30 years. The aerial sitting in the bay right now is a 1997 model and is a reserve. Our 2012 aerial is being repaired...again.
Click to expand...
Sounds like owning a Jaguar. You need two. One to drive while the other is in the shop.
 
FWIW where I work is only getting bigger and producing at max capacity with more orders than we can fill. We do sand and gravel products primarily focused on filtration. 27 employees, regular international shipments. 50 & 100 lbs plastic bags. And ā€œsuper sacksā€ starting at 1,500 up to 3,000 lbs. heā€™ll last week we opened a contract sending material to the Middle East. Apparently they donā€™t have enough sand?? Projected expansions at the plant over the next 2-7 yrs are going to be interesting.
 
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