U.S. car and truck parts supplier ArvinMeritor Inc. expects a slow down in heavy truck orders in North America to come in March or April, with a significant pick up unlikely until 2008, the company's chief executive said this week.

"We are anticipating a trough, do see it coming in the March-April time frame, and do see it continuing for a couple of quarters and then picking up from there," Chief Executive Chip McClure said at an analyst's conference in suburban Detroit.
ArvinMeritor expects a slight uptick in orders in its fourth quarter, which runs July through September, but does not expect a real increase in heavy truck orders to start until its second quarter next year, from January through March 2008.
The first two months of ArvinMeritor's fiscal first quarter saw fairly strong sales, but began to soften in December, McClure said.
ArvinMeritor generated $9.2 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year from parts ranging from axle systems, exhausts, brakes and suspensions. About 53 percent of its revenue comes from the parts for light vehicles and 47 percent from heavy trucks.
The Troy, Mich., company expects light vehicle sales in the United States and Europe to be essentially flat overall the next five or six years with a continued shifts in market share among its automaker customers, McClure said.