This
JD Power survey indicates that the percentage of Class 8 truck owners who will
definitely be buying or leasing a new vehicle over the next twelve months has
fallen to 25 per cent, the lowest level since 2002.
In addition, the number of fleet owners indicating that their fleet size will increase over the same period has fallen to 54 per cent from 63 per cent.
JD Powers' survey, which polled 2692 primary maintainers of Class 8 trucks during April and May 2008 may, we feel, now be slightly out of date. Before last week, US truck buyers were to have been offered a choice of two technologies; with DTNA (Freightliner Sterling and Western Star) PACCAR (Peterbilt and Kenworth) and Volvo all offering a Cummins engine option in addition to their respective proprietary engine choices. As such, buyers could opt for SCR-equipped DDC/PACCAR/Volvo powerplants, or, should they wish to avoid what is a new and entirely unproven technology within the North American marketplace, could instead have opted for the EGR-based Cummins engine.
Now things are different. Cummins has opted to join the SCR camp, meaning that the only non-SCR engine now on offer to North American truck buyers will be - and we use the future tense here for good reason - Navistar's rebadged MAN D20 / D26 engine range.
Bear in mind that this engine remains untested at Euro V levels, and so Navistar's claims EPA 10 - which is, to all intents and purposes, Euro VI - have to be taken under advisement. MAN is combining EGR with SCR at Euro VI - or was intending to a couple of weeks ago at any rate, and so the real world performance of Maxxforce with EGR alone remains crucial to this debate.
But the key issue here is one of choice. With two clear differentiated technology options on the table for EPA 10, one of which offered an alternative in the still key 15 litre segment - the Cummins ISX - truck buyers could well have sat through the EPA 10 introduction deadline having adopted a wait and see position. This option is no longer available. Moreover - and we'll stick our necks out here - we're pretty certain that Navistar will not launch an EGR engine without SCR after-treatment for EPA 10. If Cummins can't make the thing work properly, we cannot believe that MAN can.
So, it's SCR all the way after January 2010. And, according to our now oft quoted source, the 13th Quarterly Truck Survey published by UBS, 81 per cent of US truck buyers don't want SCR. Obviously that figure will reduce with some heavy-duty marketing on the part of the OEMs, but the fact remains that there will be a significant percentage of the truck buying population that will wish to retain a conventional - ie non-SCR - approach to things. Their choice is now a simple one. Buy a truck before 1st January 2010. If enough truck operators decide on this course of action, if they are still solvent and can raise the money in order so to do, then we assume that they will opt to carry EPA 07 technology over into the EPA 10 era, and wait and see what happens. And, leaving aside the message from head office, any commission-based truck salesman with half an ounce of common sense should now be on the 'phone to his customers making just this point.
So there you have it; a 2009 pre-buy. Not a big one, and certainly well shy of the peak of 2006, but still a significant bump in demand. How quite it gets managed remains to be seen.