All Truck Sales

All Truck Sales is one series within the monthly Motor Vehicle Unit Retail Sales dataset from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). It counts new trucks sold at retail in the United States during the calendar month.

Monthly unit inputs feed the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), the accounts behind GDP (gross domestic product) motor-vehicle output. It does not measure dollar output, used-truck deals, factory production, inventories, or freight hauling.

The reference month is the calendar month, covering retail units sold during that month as reported to Wards Intelligence by makers and dealers. Data appear monthly early in the following month with no fixed BEA news-release time for this line.

Each update appears alongside companion auto, truck and total vehicle lines and motor-vehicle Table 7.2. Domestic means assembled in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and foreign means assembled elsewhere. When registration data lag, the third month of the quarter is estimated from the prior month shares, and later data replace the estimate. Seasonal factors are reviewed each year over the most recent 5 years, with annual and comprehensive revisions.

Readers track the level in millions of units at SAAR with its monthly direction, with no set threshold, since higher means stronger demand.

Truck totals move with personal vehicle demand and business fleet needs.

• Light trucks: new pickups, sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and minivans up to 14000 pounds, the dominant share.
• Heavy trucks: units over 14000 pounds tied to freight, construction and fleet investment, the small business-sensitive leg.
• Domestic versus foreign assembly: light-truck split by build location into domestic and foreign assembly.

Heavy-truck sales collapsed in the Great Recession to 175 thousand SAAR in April 2009. Sales almost doubled to 346 thousand SAAR by October 2011, the highest since June 2007. The level still sat below the 20-year average and far below peaks, showing a rise can still leave demand weak. The small heavy leg thus amplifies the business cycle while light trucks drive the headline level.

1. Units: Start with Wards Intelligence retail unit sales for the month, split into domestic light, foreign light and heavy trucks. Allocate personal versus business shares with IHS-Polk registrations and J.D. Power prices.
2. Seasonal adjustment: Remove normal yearly patterns with regularly updated concurrent factors, keeping adjusted sales for aggregation. BEA uses source-adjusted data when given, else Census seasonal software X-13.
3. Annualize to SAAR: Multiply adjusted monthly units by 12 to state the pace as an annual rate. As an illustration, 1.100 million light units and 0.033 million heavy units annualize to 13.200 million and 0.396 million.
4. Total: Sum the SAAR components for All Truck Sales, which indirectly seasonally adjusts the total. The illustration totals 13.200 plus 0.396 to 13.596 million, shown as about 13.6 million SAAR.