ITA Predicts Stable Market For 2009

By Stan Simpson

Just one year ago in these pages, I said 2008 would look a lot like 2007 for the industrial truck market. That was certainly true for the first half of the year. Then, seemingly overnight, several things took a turn for the worse.

As I write this, many market indicators for the last half of 2008 say the year, in fact, will not end up looking much like 2007.

Several things from outside the industrial truck market have changed and will continue to impact our outlook on the industry for a while:

• The huge changes to the financial market will certainly tighten the financing for new trucks.
• The slowdown in new home building is deeper than predicted.
• Oil prices reached a new high of over $100 per barrel (though they have since dropped).

With all these negatives, a person could easily predict that a larger slowdown in new truck sales is in the offing for 2009.

Not the Whole Story
However, during the Industrial Truck Association's annual meeting last October, this was not the whole story. Many top industry executives predict 2009 will not look too much different than the business trend for the last half of 2008. The predicted unit volume for 2008 was only slightly below the 2007 numbers but certainly lower in the second half.

When we compare 2008 estimated unit volumes by truck class to what we predict for 2009, we see a small increase in unit sales over the latest 2008 estimates. When you think about the overall size (unit volume) of our market, it is a positive reflection on our industry that we can maintain an annual shipment rate of over 170,000 trucks for next year (see Table 1).

When you compare the material handling industry to most other major segments, you soon realize that we continue to perform as a very stable and predictable business segment. The technology advancements, along with increased operator training, continue to support the fact that we are one of the core industries that keeps America strong and in a leadership position. Our industry continues to reinvest a large portion of its earnings back into new technology in order to continue to provide better products with reduced operating costs and higher uptime records. 2009 will, once again, see an increase in many of the new technologies like hybrid power systems, on-board diagnostics, increased operator safety features and new load handling attachments.

Our industry has a lot to offer to the users of material handling equipment. In 12 months, we can look back on the year and see if we continue to be the leader in being both nimble and on target for the marketplace.

The North American Industrial Truck market is fortunate to have a great trade association that allows us to be directly involved in all the major world markets as it relates to trends and “lessons learned” which continues to allow us to be pretty good predictors of tomorrow!

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The MHEDA Journal • First Quarter 2009 • Volume 38, No. 1 • Contents are Copyright © Data Key Communications, Inc.
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