Automotive Trucks information on net.

Light, medium, and heavy trucks are selling at such a hot pace that they accounted for almost 40 percent of vehicle sales during the first six months of 1993. That is up from 36 percent during the same period last year.

Light trucks in particular have been posting strong sales figures. Pickups, sport utilities, and vans accounted for nearly 38 percent of all vehicles sold in the first six months of 1993. While medium and heavy trucks comprised just over 2 percent of total vehicle sales, that market share has been growing.

Orders for the largest trucks in 1992 reached 160,000, the highest level since 1978. In the first haft of 1993, sales of such trucks soared 38.4 percent over the same period in 1992, according to the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.

The final figures for this year are likely to show vigorous growth in the Class 8 truck market--the biggest trucks, those with gross vehicle weight exceeding 33,000 pounds-says James Meil, manager of economic analysis for Eaton Corp., a Cleveland-based manufacturer of automotive components. He says the expected growth stems from the revitalization of U.S. manufacturing. "The transportation of manufactured goods," he says, "is responsible for more than 80 percent of total truck ton-miles."

"The truck business is better than the economy as a whole," says James L. Hebe, president and CEO of Freightliner Corp. He attributes truck manufacturing's good health to a decline in inflation and interest rates and to expansion in industrial production, exports, and construction, all of which have produced a 14 percent increase in tonnage trucked per mile from mid-1991 to the end of 1992.

Equally encouraging are analysts' predictions based on consumer reactions to the new trucks for 1994. According to the forecasts, 5.2 million to 6.2 million light trucks will be sold in 1994, compared with 4.9 million in 1992, the latest year for which complete figures are available.

Sales of medium and heavy trucks, which totaled 249,000 in 1992 and were up for the first six months of 1993 by more than 18,000 units over the same period in 1992, are expected to be steady in 1994.

Manufacturers are trying to meet buyers' demands that trucks--light trucks especially--be as comfortable as automobiles. Interiors of some new light trucks resemble spotty cars, and exteriors are more and more stylish. Suspensions of light trucks are softer, with more-rugged systems available for hard duty.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:11 AM