Mack's second-quarter orders surge 58%

[kscarbel2]

Jon Harris, The Morning Call (Allentown, PA newspaper)  /  July 19, 2017

For the second consecutive quarter, Mack Trucks delivered fewer trucks than a year ago but received a surge in orders as a result of an active construction segment and slowly improving freight environment in North America.

But the decline in deliveries wasn’t nearly as pronounced as the first quarter, when Mack reported a 24 percent decrease from the year-earlier period.

In the second quarter, Mack delivered 5,507 trucks worldwide, a mere 1 percent decline — 81 trucks — from the 5,588 completed a year ago, according to a report released Wednesday by Mack’s parent company, Sweden’s Volvo Group.

Meanwhile, Mack received 4,746 orders during the second quarter, a 58 percent rise from 3,007 in the year-earlier period. Mack’s primary market, North America, drove most of the growth, responsible for 4,143 orders in the period, a 48 percent increase from a year ago.

By comparison, there were 5,281 orders for Volvo-branded trucks in the quarter, a smaller increase of 16 percent from last year.

In the second quarter, Mack’s market share in North America increased to 8.2 percent, while Volvo Trucks’ share decreased to 8.8 percent.

For Mack, the surge in orders, which translates to future deliveries, backs up the recent hiring the company has been doing at its 1-million-square-foot Lower Macungie Township facility, where all Mack trucks built for the North American market and export are assembled.

The company’s Lehigh Valley Operations, as they’ve been dubbed, employ about 1,800 people, spokesman Christopher Heffner said last week. In addition, he said, the facility is still hiring, with available production jobs posted at www.careerlinklehighvalley.org/MackTrucks.aspx.

According to the Volvo Group, the highway segment in North America is still “characterized by over-capacity due to the underutilized population of used long-haulage trucks.” But, the company noted, the construction segment continues to perform well and regional distribution is showing signs of higher activity.

As such, Volvo upgraded its heavy-duty truck forecast in North America to 225,000 units for 2017, up 10,000 from its previous estimate. But that forecast is still short of the 243,000 trucks the market finished with last year, which John Walsh, Mack’s vice president of global marketing and brand management, said is an important factor to consider when thinking about the company’s year-over-year delivery declines so far this year.

“As we move through the second half of 2017, we look forward to continuing to meet our customers’ needs with our current truck lineup, as well as with a new member of the Mack family coming this fall,” Walsh said, referring to Mack’s new highway model that will be unveiled Sept. 13.