Comical Ali might have pulled it off, but it’s difficult to think of anyone else who could talk up the prospects for the US truck industry in 2007. Now it seems that the mainstream US media has suddenly awoken to the fact that there are bad times ahead. This article refers to Freightliner, but it would apply - we think - to the rest as well.
There’s been an awful lot of smoke blown over the previous months about how things are going to be not so bad, the landing soft and that the darkest hour is before dawn. We think that this is a crock. The US Economy is a worrying place at the moment. Political uncertainty in the run up to the November Midterms is growing, and the likelihood of people getting out and spending next year seems remote.
Add to this the EPA 07 emissions shift, and we doubt very much whether a US truck salesman will be able get arrested next year, let alone get an appointment with a truck buyer. In blunt terms, we’ll predict a market downturn of 40 per cent during 2007.
Downturns have happened before, but this will be the first post-globalisation recession. A macro-economic downturn in the US will impact upon China, and when the two biggest economies on earth go sour, that’s bad for all of us. And, for the truck industry, a business in which success is predicated almost entirely on the health of the economy at large, this has to be a worry.
So, 40 per cent down next year in the Land of the Free, and some similar nastiness to be had in Asia too. What gets washed up upon European shores from the wreck of the NAFTA / Asian markets remains to be seen, but, for the first time, it’s global rather than regional OEM’s that are standing in the way of the bullet. That has to change the thinking somewhat, and, in the final analysis, the outlook has to be considered bleak.