December preliminary North America Class 8 net orders of 42.7k units increased 16% year over year. Complete industry data for December, including final order numbers, will be published by ACT Research in mid-January.
“After spending most of 2025 in the doldrums, amid stagnant freight rates and beset by policy and regulatory uncertainty, new vehicle demand jolted awake in December,” Carter Vieth, research analyst at ACT Research, said. “A firmer economic foundation, increasingly aged fleets, and the certainty of higher costs and new technologies in 2027 were the impetus, in our opinion, for the sudden change of heart. As trucking fundamentals remain thin, if improving, we view December’s Class 8 result as overstating the improvement.”
