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A Freightliner M2 106 medium-duty truck. The Daimler Truck North America brand reported the most Class 7 sales in July. (Freightliner)

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U.S. medium-duty truck sales fell 17.3% year over year in July, according to data from Wards Intelligence.

Classes 4-7 retail truck sales for the month decreased to 17,204 from 20,792 a year earlier. Monthly sales figures across the sector have mostly been trending below year-ago levels since May 2024. They also slipped 3.3% sequentially from the 17,797 units reported in June.

“These lease rental fleets have just had very lumpy activity as it relates to their normal trade cycle,” said. “In the Class 7 market in particular, we’re sort of seeing a normalization there. Things were a bit weak last year in terms of acquisitions or equipment replacement.

“There’s not an overarching sense of, ‘Yeah, demand is improving or increasing,’ but I think they’re just taking advantage of the marketplace by trying to trade out some of their older equipment.”

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Tam noted that medium-duty backlogs have returned to historical norms after an unsettled stretch during the pandemic era. He attributes this to manufacturers having a chance to catch up amid this period of weaker demand.

“If you rewind the calendar — say, maybe a year ago — in the medium-duty space we had twice or more than twice our historical backlog level,” Tam said. “Stuff was just really caught up in the delivery pipeline.”

Upfitters also have had to balance staffing needs against customer demand to catch up on backlogged work.

“The upfit manufacturers were very reluctant — or it’s probably a combination of reluctance and a lack of ability — to actually add human capital, to find people to do the work,” Tam said.

“They saw the writing on the wall that, ‘We can staff for this or we can ramp for this, but as soon as we work through it, we’re not going to need them anymore,’ ” he added. “And so, [they said] ‘Let’s not go there, let’s just maintain what we’re doing, and people will just have to wait to get their equipment.’”

Wards data showed that Class 7 truck sales increased 6.9% to 5,220 units from 4,885 from last year. Class 6 sales declined 16.5% to 5,086 units from 6,090; Class 5 truck sales decreased 30.3% to 5,462 units from 7,842; and Class 4 sales decreased 27.3% to 1,436 units from 1,975.

, a brand of , reported the most Class 7 sales at 2,111 units. Ford sold the most Class 6 trucks with 1,878 and Class 5 at 3,228. Isuzu sold the most Class 4 units at 1,044.

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