Upfitters experienced a whipsaw effect of robust fleet orders straining their pre-pandemic production capacity and within the space of a month were struggling with chassis shortages due to the suspension of vehicle production.
Winter Equipment is encouraging early orders of snowplow equipment to avoid shortages brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the past several model years, order-to-delivery times for high-volume work trucks and vans have increased due to strong demand. Vocational trucks are vulnerable to OTD delays because fleet orders are usually concentrated among a handful of models.
Fleet order-to-delivery times for model-year 2019 increased in comparison to those in MY-2018. Delays were caused by rail constraints, plant downtimes, truck driver shortages, production capacity strains, and early order cutoffs.
A proverb is a phrase that gives real-world advice learned from practical experience. Upfitting is complicated and there are many opportunities to make mistakes, sometimes very expensive ones. Here are 10 proverbs for a successful upfit.
Heil now offers the growing Ready Truck Program, a business model aimed to alleviate issues caused by delays in the production and delivery of new garbage trucks.
To get the pulse of the vocational truck and van market, I reached out to a wide cross-section of fleet managers around the country to find out what’s on their minds. Here’s a snapshot of what they told me.
Earlier this year, the automaker announced a major change to its vehicle portfolio, shifting to around 90% trucks, utilities, and commercial vehicles by 2020.
Increased fleet orders for trucks and vans created backlogs at upfitter facilities, increasing lead times and missed ship-thrus. A shortage of rail autorack carriers further delayed deliveries. Despite this, order-to-delivery for most units was similar to 2017.
Strong demand for light- and medium-duty trucks in the 2018 model-year increased order-to-delivery (OTD) times, resulting in widespread upfitter backlogs despite reduced fleet allocation availability due to competing strong retail demand for trucks.
media brand
The secure and easy all-access connection to your content.
Bookmarked content can then be accessed anytime on all of your logged in devices!
Already a member? Log In
