Dick Giromini
President and CEO
Well, the analysis that’s been done a couple occasions on different ways, when we look and compare at the significant number of trailers that were produced back in 1998 through 2000 in excess of 860,000 units and we look at what the typical trade cycles are for a lot of the larger fleets, anywhere for 8 to 12 years. Nominally you’ve got some to do it on a shorter basis, sell it on you mentioned. They’ve been very aggressive and trying to get a very, very young fleet. Hartland is been the most consistent and having a relatively young fleet. Knight is another one that turns the equipment over on more frequent basis and you’ve got some others that try and stretch them out 12 years and beyond. But on average 8 to 12 years or normally 10 years. So, when you look at the equipment build in ’98 or 2000 and you go forward 10 years, that was the 2008 or 2010 time frame when only 350,000 trailers were built. So, that gap is in access of 500,000 units that would normally have been already gone through their typical replacement cycle or certainly a good percentage of them. When you combine that with the fact that they were couple of hundred thousand units taking out of the system, so capacity reduced from the system during the downturn, during that 2010, you could say there is a net 300,000 that are yet to be replaced from that ’98 or 2000 timeframe. That takes a several years. If normal replacement on an annual basis is about 200,000 units, at a 240,000 rate that takes eight years to replace that level. That’s where there is been a lot of suggestions that this could turn out to be the strongest, certainly the longest cycle of strength for our industry, maybe ever because the replacement levels will help sustain demand levels above normal replacement for an extended period of time. So it’s not unrealistic to look at the projections that ACT has for next year that are close to 260,000 units and say yes, that’s reasonable, that’s only 60,000 units above normal replacement and though that 60,000 excess is just cutting into that 300,000 backlog of old teenage trailers, 13, 14, 15 year old units, that need to get out of the system.