Dive Brief:
- Daimler Truck North America’s Q3 unit sales dropped 39% and incoming orders fell 29% with CFO Eva Scherer calling out a “sharp contraction” in the U.S. market, during the company’s Nov. 7 earnings call.
- She attributed part of the sales decline to front-loaded Q2 deliveries, as the truck maker sought to fulfill customers’ orders before potential heftier tariffs took effect.
- Despite near-term weakness, Daimler’s existing order backlog covers its 2025 unit sales guidance, which is between 135,000 to 155,000 units in North America, compared with 308,000 units in the region last year.
Dive Insight:
Daimler continues to grapple with a lingering freight recession that’s eroding ordering activity and squeezing margins in one of its key markets: North America.
The company sold 200,000 Class 8 trucks in the first nine months of the year in the market, a 12% year-over-year decline. That slump deepened in Q3 — Class 8 sales fell 20% YoY, Scherer said.
Even so, when asked about the mood of customers in North America, Scherer was optimistic: “Maybe slightly better.”
“It’s still a wait-and-see mood, and we really need to see freight rates getting to a better level there in order to, I think, really see a changed mood and momentum,” she said. “Nobody is excited about the market, I can tell you that much. And a lot of players in the market are struggling because of that.”
Meanwhile, tariffs are chipping away at profitability. Scherer said the net impact of existing duties amounts to a “low triple-digit million” euro hit this year. Daimler is passing some of those costs on to its customers through a tariff surcharge introduced in Q1 that remains in place today.
As for Section 232 tariffs, Scherer said it is too early to assess the financial impact.
“We are obviously in close discussions with the U.S. administration in order to understand that better and also to, of course, discuss mitigation measures,” she said. “And as part of mitigation measures, we will always look at how we utilize our flexible production network.”
In North America, Daimler manufactures Freightliner and Western Star trucks in Portland, Oregon; Cleveland, North Carolina; and Santiago Tianguistenco and Saltillo, Mexico.
Daimler’s backlog provides some cushion entering 2025; however, Scherer emphasized that any sustained recovery in North America is unlikely until mid-2026.
