Trucking companies have been pre-buying trucks, and few plan to buy new trucks in the fourth quarter of the year, thanks to new emissions standards that go into effect Oct. 1, according to a survey released this week by the American Trucking Associations.

Nearly 40 percent of the responding companies have pre-bought or are pre-buying trucks – more than 8,000 of them. “A pre-buy of this magnitude would seem to indicate that many companies have major concerns over the post-October 1 engines,” says the survey summary.
The pre-buy was limited, for the most part, to larger carriers, with more than three-fourths of those pre-buying trucks having more than 300 trucks in their fleet.
More than 90 percent of the companies responding said they will not take delivery of a new engine meeting the new standards in the fourth quarter of the year. Only 2.4 percent of respondents definitely planned to take delivery, only 164 new-engine trucks total.
Only 23 percent of the responding companies, representing slightly more than half of the power units in the survey, say they are planning to take delivery of the new engines next year. The ATA analysis says compared to the number of new trucks respondents would typically buy based on average truck trade cycles, these carriers plan to buy less than half the trucks they normally would.
The survey results also indicate that not even a robust economic recovery would prompt many of the respondents to buy more of the new engines. More than 70 percent said they would buy or lease used trucks if they had to add capacity in 2003 due to an economic surge.
In late June, ATA sent a survey to its motor carrier membership and distributed it to the 50 affiliated state trucking associations. The 815 responses came from a good cross-section of motor carriers, with the average number of power units per company 274, ranging from single-truck owner-operators to fleets of over 10,000 trucks. Truckload, LTL, private carriers, small package carriers, truck rental and leasing representatives were all represented in the survey.
To view the report in PDF, go to http://truckline.com/infocenter/econ/enginereport.pdf.