Planning (not) made easy

The September magazine is traditionally TBB’s planning issue. This year, I must say, good luck with that.

I wrote here several months ago that I was tired of writing about uncertainty. It’s lousy for businesses because uncertainty makes planning hard; it’s embarrassing for a journalist because the job is to find answers.

So we’ve tried, by doing what we always do: Ask the experts. The equipment market outlook story, on Page 20, is based on presentations by analysts during the recent “Market Vitals” conference, organized by ACT Research.

Unfortunately, as ACT President & Senior Analyst Ken Vieth joked at one point, it’s a good thing they weren’t playing a drinking game based on how many times someone said the word “uncertainty.”

Also on hand for the event was Hyundai Translead CEO Sean Kenney, who participated in the OEM panel.

“At the beginning of the year there was a true level of optimism. There was evidence that things were starting to turn,” Kenney said. “And, for the first time, we were actually hearing a collection of these customers saying we’re building for a second half. We think it’s going to be really strong this year.”

That was January, but when the tariffs were first announced in February, “it stopped,” Kenney added.

“It’s not that customers are overly pessimistic, they just don’t know because it’s been so uncertain, with things starting and stopping,” he said. “So to plan their business is really, really difficult.”

The ACT Research conference comes just days after the Trump administration announced an expansion of Section 232 tariffs, with trailers being included in the list for a 50% tariff on steel and aluminum. (See the latest tariff news and timeline on Page 32.)

For manufacturers, the impact of tariffs is direct and can be factored into pricing decisions. For fleets, the impacts are much more broad, and even indirect, as Kenney explained.

“About everything they touch is being impacted by tariffs,” Kenney said. “So as complicated a world as it is for us, as an OEM, you start to take a different perspective when you think about somebody who has to run a large fleet, or a large leasing operation. I would be looking for consistency of story, consistency of pricing, consistency of understanding across all of the different products I buy. It’s a very, very challenging environment.”

Kenney and Hyundai Translead are being hit with a trade-policy double whammy.
On July 29, the U.S. Department of Commerce released its preliminary finding that the governments of Mexico and Thailand subsidize their chassis industries. Affirmative preliminary countervailing duty rates were set at 133% on imports from Mexico; and 2%, 8%, or 9% on imports from Thailand, depending on the producer. The U.S. Chassis Manufacturers Coalition, which includes Stoughton Trailers and Cheetah Chassis Corp., sought the investigation.

HT’s manufacturing facility is in Mexico, and Kenney called the preliminary rate “just outrageous.”

“I don’t think anybody overnight is going to pay 133% duty for the same product they had the day before,” he said. “So it presents a real operational challenge on what to do.”

And what did they do?

“We had a pretty healthy order book,” Kenney said. “We built the rest of what we had, and we closed down the line. We canceled the remaining backlog. You can’t build something like that, with that kind of tariff, and absorb it.”

The good news: Kenney reported that customers have been “absolutely fantastic, empathetic, and sympathetic to the plight, and worked with us very well.”

Along with the equipment forecast and tariff updates, the third leg of our 2026 planning stool focuses on the Trump Administration’s far-reaching deregulation initiatives. (See the story on Page 38.) 

But as I write this on press deadline, the stories are already out of date. At the end of August the State Department moved to block work visas for foreign truck drivers; the EPA is proposing to disapprove California’s truck inspection and maintenance requirements for out-of-state vehicles; and the DOT wants to withhold federal highway funding from states that don’t enforce English Language Proficiency standards for truckers. And a federal court ruled many of the new tariffs are illegal.

Planning might be hard, but not planning is hardly an option. So stay tuned. TBB