Hammer Lane Blog

Judging by the sights and sounds– chief among them being the positive words spoken by top executives of several major truck OEMs– here at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, trucking suppliers are straining at the bit for the economy to let them return to winning form.

Amidst all the news conferences and “booth visits,” fellow FleetOwner editor Wendy Leavitt and I had the chance to talk for a few– too few– minutes with Jim Hebe, sr. vp of North American sales operations for Navistar.



Navistar’s Jim Hebe

We started off by getting his outlook on Class 8 truck sales (U.S. and Canada). He said the year would end up “5% plus or minus higher than ‘09,” which he translated to mean a finish somewhere between 90,000 and 110,000 units.

But Hebe said for medium-duty sales he expects the “raw” figure (which excludes school buses, stripped-down chassis, and severe-service models) will leap from 47,000 units in ‘09 to 60,000 units this year.

“We’ll see a medium-duty uptick thanks largely to leasing companies coming back into the market after holding off buying new units for two years,” he noted.

Turning to Class 4/5, which Navistar so views as a growth market it has rolled out the new TerraStar truck to serve it, Hebe said what “we do with these [weight class] trucks has changed in this country. It [Class 4/5] is no longer all about buyers moving up into Class 4 or 5 from smaller trucks or downsizing from Class 6 because they needed more or less truck.



Class 4/5 TerraStar

“Rather,” he continued, “the distribution-type Class 6-7 customer has gone away. Now, goods that arrive at retail stores are more often delivered by the truckload. Even to restaurants it’s being done this way.”

On the other hand, he went on, “you can’t underestimate the growth of small businesses using trucks to carry out new services; everything from landscaping to plumbing. A Class 4 or 5 truck is what these buyers need.”

Turning to the now seemingly endless to-SCR-or-not debate, Hebe told us that as Navistar continues on with its current “advanced EGR” solution for 2010 emissions, the manufacturer does not rule out deploying other emission strategies or technologies.

“Down the road, it could be further optimization of EGR or some alternative technology or some combination of EGR and something else that we use [for compliance],” Hebe said. “But,” he added emphatically, “the solution won’t include using liquid DEF.”

It was still winter by the calendar last week in St. Louis, but on the show floor at the America’s Center near the famous Arch, a technological Spring was in full bloom, trucking style.

It was just the latest example of how it is no longer accurate to say “trucking is going green” because it already is green– and is getting greener nearly as fast as we can report it here and in print!

I mean it’s gotten to the point that truck fleet managers aren’t shocked (no pun intended) by the idea of an all-electric truck, but are more likely to be surprised that a given OEM doesn’t offer one yet.

Indeed, that not every truck maker yet offers such wondertrucks has thrown wide a door for essentially brand-new OEMs and assorted system suppliers to drive right into the heart of the light-duty P&D market and the medium/heavy “stationary” (read bucket trucks etc.) work truck market as well.

And, what’s more, these new guys at bat are being taken seriously right from their first swings by fleet operators intent on knocking some green balls out of the park, for one reason or another, right NOW.

Managers of such fleets had more green vehicle choices than ever– and not just electric, of course, but also hybrid, propane, natural gas etc.– to explore at The Work Truck Show, staged as always by the National Truck Equipmnet Assn. (NTEA).

The show in general was far bigger than ever to my eye (and feet!), consuming all the floor AND meetings space available at the America’s Center downtown, including the adjoining Edward Jones Dome, home field of the St. Louis Rams.



Year by year, truck by truck, The Work Truck Show is becoming a de facto Green Truck Show…

The greening of trucking was not only on display on the massive show floor, it was evident as well in the substantial growth in the Green Truck Summit educational program NTEA has been hosting ahead of The Work Truck Show for several years. This year’s edition offered a day and a half of speaker-led presentatiomns, panel discussions and breakout sessions on all things related to running green.



NTEA’s Green Truck Summit has helped spawn its new Green Truck Assn.

And not only did NTEA announce it has a new co-sponsor for the event– CALSTART– it also declared during the summit that it was launching a Green Truck Assn. Just further proof that the greening of trucking is well under way. And no doubt over time this growth will help trucking itself to grow in size– and in the nation’s estimation of what it means to this country.