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This story appears in the April 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

New orders for Class 8 trucks climbed 10.4% in March from a year ago and surpassed 20,000 for a sixth straight month, according to ACT Research.

The 22,100 net orders placed last month marked the second consecutive year-over-year gain and were the fourth-strongest in the past 13 months. However, the total was 4% below February’s order intake of 23,027.

Last month’s tally shows “stability” but “doesn’t exude confidence,” said ACT Vice President Steve Tam.

Companies generally aren’t expanding their fleets, he said. Instead, they are only replacing older equipment after delaying replacement cycles.

“Rather than growing their fleet, what they’re doing is replacing at a faster-than-normal replacement rate and bringing the age of the fleet back down to where it really ought to be,” Tam said.

A major factor keeping fleets from expanding capacity is “their perceived, or actual, inability to find drivers,” he said.

Through March, manufacturers have received 67,439 Class 8 orders in 2013, 0.3% below the same period last year, ACT said.

John Walsh, vice president of marketing at Mack Trucks, said the orders this year largely reflect replacement demand rather than expansion, “as the age of the existing fleet hovers near historically high levels.”

“There remains an air of caution in the market as a whole as economic uncertainty lingers,” Walsh said.

He added that Mack continues to see “upside potential moving through 2013, assuming the economy continues to chug along and more customers come off the sidelines.”

Jack Allen, president of North American trucks and parts at Navistar International Corp., said his company’s forecast still points to growth in the second half of 2013, but “we will likely continue to see some choppiness in the industry during the first half of the year.”

“Ultimately, replacement demand continues to be the driving factor behind new orders,” he said.

Todd Hooper, director of marketing operations at Daimler Trucks North America, said the current trend “continues to be in line with DTNA’s market outlook that new truck orders will continue to show strength unless there are any dramatic shocks to the system.”

DTNA makes Freightliner and Western Star trucks.

Other truck makers either declined comment or did not return calls by press time.

Another research firm, FTR Associates, put Class 8 orders in March at 21,817, up 11% year-over-year but down 4% from February.

“We didn’t expect orders to fall from recent levels; however, it is good to see actual data suggesting the market has stabilized with more upside potential for the second half of the year,” FTR President Eric Starks said in an April 2 release.

ACT’s Tam also said order backlogs stood at 83,700 at the end of February, and likely grew slightly in March.

David Leiker, an analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co., described March order activity as “uneventful.”

Last month’s orders were “likely enough to drive additional backlog growth” and support expectations for higher build into the second quarter, he wrote in a note to the firm’s clients.

Tam said he doesn’t expect the current string of 20,000-plus order months to continue much longer.

“We’ll keep it for another month or so, and then things will cool off unless the economy decides to perk up and convince some of these guys that they really need to go out and get into the marketplace,” he said.

The year-over-year gains in the past two months were “more about timing last year than strength this year,” he said.

Sterne Agee analyst Jeffrey Kauffman said in a report that “orders are still slightly below our expectations,” but year-over-year comparisons could be favorable in the coming months “given the concerns over the fiscal cliff and a lower-than-expected spring order season last year.”

FTR’s Starks said “the industry will have to be careful looking at the year-over-year changes for orders through the summer, as we saw a noticeable falloff in order activity in the middle of last year.”

“Therefore, we would expect to see healthy year-over-year gains over the next five months,” Starks said.