Rusty?
Yeah.
Oh, there it is.
Except, you know, I just basically over Q and A. If I could go back to 125 stores, if only I could take the age, like it's a practice, you know, about 10 years or 8 years old, my age, I'd take it. Hey, what are you doing, hero? All right, let's just do Q and A because I didn't bring any presentations.
Yeah, just Q and A. All right, so let's, let's,
Okay.
Just ask. You know I'm bashful.
I do. Class eight. Go. Yeah. Yeah, obviously, if you look at this year, you know, we had a six-month, we'll just talk about trucks to begin with. A six-month run, say, April through September, was the worst order intake since 2009, right?
Yep.
We chewed through the backlogs after, I think, all the OEMs built as much as they could through the end of June. Then the shutdown days and the weeks all started and continue, even today, you know, with where we're at. I haven't seen a number today, but there should be one this afternoon.
Soon, yeah.
Yeah. Or tomorrow for sure, at the latest, for what October was. But, you know, it's, I would tell you, I was at ATA last week, a week ago from today, actually, Sunday and Monday, Tuesday, right? You know, you're trying to get a feel, at least for the over-the-road customers, right? We're pretty, I consider, diversified. Class 8 side, about half our business is vocational. It's a little bit different than the market, where the market's like 65% over the road and 35. We're at least half vocational. Last week was more about the big carriers, right? You watched all the releases come out and everything else. LTL's okay. TL's terrible, right? Continuing for, we're three years into a freight recession, right?
I would say that because of that, and last year, this year, I should say, whenever I say last year, I think I'm jumping out and getting 2026 looking back, there's been muted purchases from some of the big truckload guys, right? The private folks, you know, who bought heavy in 2024 have slowed down here in the back half of this year. I, you know, we talked to Mario out there a minute ago. It's, you know, everybody uses that word uncertainty, right? We finally got some tariff alleged certainty, even though I think some guys are still trying to figure it out. I mean, when I was at ATA, and I'll give you a customer flavor in a minute, but the price, not everybody was pricing anybody, okay? They were still sorting it out a week into it, right? Trying to truly understand the impacts of it.
You know, from Rush's perspective, it will probably be good for one OEM and bad for another OEM, right? Depending on where you build, it was the 232s, what I'm talking about in particular. You know, but we're still left with one of those jellies. What are we going to do with the, you know, EPA, right? I think they're going to, you want my opinion, they're going to stay at 0.35 and not go back and keep it at 0.20. I know ATA is sending a letter and asking all the OEMs to sign it, and they're still fighting with the EPA or trying to push back on the EPA. And get what you would call, oh, what do you call it?
Well, a lot like California did where you paid $9,000 to get an engine before we, before May, when we pulled all their waivers and all, to get a regular deal, where they could pay like $3,000, what people say, and they could still buy a 0.20. I don't think it's going to happen. You know, if my customer base wants it for the over-the-road, they want a break, you know, because they've just been beat up to hell, the last three TL side. Because of that, if it stays 35, fourth quarter and first quarter are going to be rough for sure from a truck perspective. I would expect, you know, you're going to get an uptick in the back half, but it's so uncertain. If you look at ACT, and I use US numbers, it's 167 for next year, which would be the worst year since 2010. Okay?
PACCAR, on the other hand, calls it flat, which would be where it's going to end up, 215, somewhere in that range, 220, and Cummins is saying 5%-6%, 7% down. So I'm not sure. That gives you the variability of what's out there, right? Nobody's really sure where we're at other than we know it's rough right now. At the same time, I came out of there feeling a little bit better, you know, especially, I asked myself, do I want to keep it at 35? Because they're going to get rid of the warranties. They're going to, I think this is what will happen.
Can you explain just to the audience just the EPA potential here?
Yeah, the EPA potential was, remember before, before Congress got involved back in April, May, obviously you had all this cost going to come in, probably $25,000, half of it being warranties, right? You're going to put 10-year warranties on aftertreatment, you know, just that you've never run, okay? Because you're having to go back down to 35. I don't really want to try to get into all, all the OEMs signed a deal with California back in 2024. Or 2020, late 2023 or 2024. Going back on that. Point being that I think they're going to stay at 35 because what happened was, they went and pulled the waivers on California. They did everything everybody wanted. Then they asked the OEMs what they want. They all wanted something different. They go, wait a minute, we did this for you, is what I hear.
Now you can't all get together and agree on what you want, right? I, they were looking, I mean, I changed monthly over the last three or four months with my intel, talking to different people. I feel like I've got pretty good intel. I would have told you two months ago, it was going to go back to, say, 200, where it is now, not go to 35 from a NOx perspective. I think it's going to stay at 35. It may not. I hope the customers won't overturn. I'm for whatever they want to do. If it goes to 200, you wouldn't get as big a push. Maybe in the back half of next year, it won't be long. If it goes to 35, it's probably with no warranty and allowing the OEMs to, what's it, sponge, move medium and heavy credits back and forth.
Probably $12,000 more, you know, something in that range. Let's say $10,000 to $15,000, but not $25,000.
Just to mention that. So $12,000 on top of what?
The tariff cost.
No, just your price, the price now is, is X.
Yeah, it's X.
Right.
Right. Yeah. Let's just say average. It depends on, right? We know what it is. You know, specifications on trucks are very over the road. Over the road, big carriers are not that high, but you know, with small carriers and stuff are. But yeah. So you're going to get, you're getting a tariff push of 10 or 12 more anyway, and then you get 10 or 12 more on a market that's been in a recession, you know, a freight recession for three years. It's, but it's still, they're waiting to see. I, I've been told this before, but somewhere in the next 30 days. The OEMs want to know. I mean, they're going to have a whole different supply base and everything else if they stay with where they're at because they're phasing out, you know, doing the different aftertreatments and stuff.
The engine designs are a little different. And we can't get an answer, right? If it's, if it, if they leave the law in place the way it is, then it'll go to 35%. I think they'll pull, the warranties are coming out for sure. I'm pretty confident. They're not going to, and that was 40%-50% of the cost because everybody was throwing a darn old law.
That cuts the 25 down to 12.
Yeah. So, and give me a little fudge factor here both ways on all that, right? So, yeah.
How do you as a dealer prepare for that from an inventory perspective, knowing that a lot of your customers are ordering, ordering and, you know, what does that do for you from a just.
You know, obviously we carry stock inventory. 80% of what we sell is pre-sold when we order it, right? You know, 20% of what we sell, I would tell you, comes out of stock. I have an over, you know, we'd wait, we'd have to get into next year and see how we would approach next year. It's a little bit early right now. We'd have to look at demand. I mean, I go back to 2009. Remember we went to SCR. It was supposed to be a great big year, right? In 2009, we sold 97,000 in the U.S., worst year since 1982, being an old person. It didn't matter if we were going to SCR because your business still is, you know, the main driver of what you're doing. Technology is going to take a backseat to your business.
That should, in my view, elevate your used business.
It, we'll wait and see. Let's get some firm, the used has been good. We've had a really solid last year and a half or two in used. I'm not going to say over the top, but solid, right? A solid contributor. Used value should go up. You throw tariffs in there, and you know, you're raising the price of a new truck. It's just natural that you should raise, you know, late model used values. They've been stable now for a little while.
Yeah.
Okay. They haven't taken some big jump, but, you know, go back two years, we were dropping like 4% a month instead of 0.15%, which is more typical.
Play this out a little bit further. Now you have carriers that are hesitant to go buy a new truck with another $12,000 on it. They're sweating their fleet more. What's that doing for you from a parts and service standpoint?
How about we stay flat? Okay. We really, because their business is tough, right? Miles driven are off. Okay. You got to drive mi to wear stuff out. Just because it sits there and ages does not wear it out, right? You got to put mi on it. Miles driven, tonnage has been like that too. I mean, there just has not, it has just been weird. I have never seen something last as long. Typically, it is a 14-16 month deal or so. And now we are working on three years. You got to be closer to the end. You got to believe, right? Because they kept buying in the first part of this. They did not need to, but they did. Typical truck, typical truckers. They kept buying until this year.
They slowed down a lot more on that piece of the market, the over-the-road business. It is off more, say the tractor itself more than the truck business, right?
Usually these periods are characterized by some bankruptcies, particularly on the truckload side.
Here it comes.
To take a passenger.
Here they're coming right now. You know what? Because of non-domicile drivers. That's what everybody, that was the, I had read everywhere. And so I'm not an expert at it, but I had read, okay, non-domicile. CDL drivers, language, English language proficiency. All right, we're going to take 5% out. Some people tell me 15% or more.
The 15% of the available drivers.
I don't know that to be fact, but out there they were talking like that. You know, now we got to have state enforcement, right? You know, the neighboring state from here is not really enforcing it yet, the one to the west. But some states, there's 15-18 states that are really starting to, but it's just rolling, right? It'll be moving, it'll be a process. It's not just an Adalater and Stir overnight thing, but you'll start to take drivers out. Now we've heard it from customers. Actually, a used customer here recently, this last two weeks ago, right? He couldn't take stuff that he wanted because he didn't have drivers. You know, he had drivers taken out. It's the small guys. That was one of the reasons you had financial institutions that weren't foreclosing like they typically had.
You also had these guys that were operating under the cost of what the people that were running legally were, right? Because they're paying way less. They're almost living out of the trucks. Their cost for that piece was way less than, say, people that were compliant with the law. This should, you know, take, like I said, people were talking about 15% and possibly even more. I hate to say it because I'm not sure, but everything I'd heard before was five, but that was the big buzz about taking, you know, we're going to take out some, you know, you're going to take capacity out because capacity did not come out like it should have. Apparently a lot of folks feel that was one of the reasons behind it.
You know, you've been opportunistic in the past when situations have happened. If you were to see a situation where a truckload carrier were to go Chapter 11 and liquidate, would there be an opportunity for you to buy any inventory on the used, on the used truck side of the transit?
We work with financial institutions all the time buying inventory, right? So it's not anything out of the norm. Now, if there was a big volume of it, that would, you know, be normal, but we're always, you know, we were involved in when Yellow two years ago, right? We bought stuff out of that. Not the junk. They had some later model stuff too that we did buy when Yellow went out a couple of years ago.
Thinking about the vocational side of the business, which has been phenomenal on a relative basis for some time.
Right.
Maybe talk about the end markets there within vocational that have been the strongest and which you think are likely to continue to stay strong for the duration.
Our strongest market in the vocational side is probably, it's not a big market, but we're big in it. And that's the refuse business.
Refuse.
Yeah. We're probably 25% of all the garbage trucks sold in the United States. That's a 10,000 unit market, but it's still a, I love it because they keep the trucks forever and they run them in the ground. You don't see used garbage trucks for sale. Obviously, the parts and service spend, no matter who it is, is pretty strong on the aftermarket, right? You get a pretty good tail. I think we should have a good tail from what we've done in the last 10 years, really continuing to grow in that piece. Construction business has been good. You know, some states better than others. Typically we do real well, say in California, but California has been a mess. I mean, we were 500 units off in California this year, right?
Now I will say this, next year might be one of our few, hopefully during the year, bright spots. I'm not going to say a few, but because it's still uncertain, right? We're working deals. I heard about a 300 unit deal we picked up Friday when I was this morning. You know, there's stuff, not a lot, but there's some stuff percolating out there. Back to the vocational question, then obviously, you know, construction, we get into that. That's a very different products, right? Whether it's mixers or in-domes, all different kinds of stuff that I consider, you know, construction, but it's with all the, with the highway bills and all that good stuff that was passed a couple of years ago, there's been good spend. It's not as robust. It's more turned toward normal run rates right now.
It was really robust, say a year or so ago, as people were getting, you know, set up for stuff, but it's not tanking like the over-the-road business has, at least for us anyway. I'm not sure what the national numbers are on it. I hadn't looked at that to see the breakout or what tractors are down and trucks are down, you know, but, you know, I think we had a real big in refuse in 2024. We were a little off in 2025, but there was a bunch of catch up after allocation, right? You had areas where you had to catch up, that people caught up after allocation, which for about two years, that's all anybody can say. Now they can't spell it, but that's not an issue at the moment.
You know, I expect to have a fair, I think we're about, if I was going to be flat in the refuse side, we're talking, I don't know, 2,200-2,500 units. We're probably 65% there. I know a couple of deals we need to get and then we'll be flat with this year, which I'll be okay with because you were still, we're catching up some, even at the first half of this last year, from where we, you know, from allocation.
That refuse business has always been one where they've wanted to move towards alternative propulsion and even on electric side. Are you seeing any of that or is just.
I mean, you know, the big, obviously WM, is a great customer of ours. That's our biggest, obviously natural gas. They're still, you know, committed totally. Not everywhere because some places they have used base, so I'm going to tell you that 80% or something like that, you know, natural gas. If you're asking about alternative technologies, again, that's one right now. Not many people are spelling. Okay. At least with this administration right now.
Sure.
It's not in vogue. Let's say you've seen, oh, what was it? I think an even International row of $150 million here or something for their deal. And you've seen a lot of that. A lot of companies have cleaned up some of their spend, with Ryder's in the past.
I guess the question, not only on EV, but was really on the nat gas side, which is an area that you've spent a lot of time in for a long time.
Yeah. You can call it sort of my folly maybe. When we got into the natural gas fuel system business back in 2015. Everybody was, I like 2014. Okay. It's going to be against 2%, right? It's going to be 8%, 10%, 15%. Still 2%. And see California with their laws, which would have been big, but none of it matters anymore. The way things looked a year ago, natural gas was written out of all the grants mostly and everything else because it was so EV, right? Just total net zero, right? As you know, we did a JV with Cummins three and a half, maybe four years come January 1, where they bought 50% of the deal I had. We are partners with Cummins and what we call CCFT, Cummins Clean Fuel Technologies. It's just, you know, I'm not getting rich on it. Let's say that.
It's just, but it hangs in there and it's part of the, I reason, one thing is it's part of the overall offerings because you have the one sector that you have or net gas in is refuse, okay? Not just WM. It makes you more of a one-stop shop when you can do things like that.
Yeah.
Across the board.
One of the areas that you had some initiatives was in on the mobile side and parts and service. Obviously, mi driven not where you, not where you wanted to be. Maybe talk about that.
You know, we got a goal to get to a thousand. We're supposed to be doing a hundred a year. I don't think we did quite that many this year to mobile techs. You know, there's a difference. There's mobile maintenance and then there's, we're more mobile repair, right? We tend to, I mean, we take care of breakdowns and things like that, but we're in the 700 and plus something range. That's trucks and embedded technicians, right? Because if you, you know, some people, they don't want the training and the technology and everything to do it. It's not their business. So we have, you know, some of those. I don't really know what the breakout is. It's mainly mobile trucks, but we have, you know, 100, 150 of those are embedded technicians, but we still believe in that.
You know, our main business with that is, you know, if someone will have five trucks or six trucks or the other, then we'll go out and take care of all, you know, what they need taken care of. Like I said, we'll take care of mobile breakdowns, but it's not our, it's not what we really go after. We're trying to get better at the mobile maintenance business. You know, we'll continue to make strides. I didn't make as much, as many as I wanted to this year, but we're still going in the right direction.
That's more of a scheduled repair on the, on the mobile maintenance side.
It can be. Yeah. Scheduled with the maintenance side. Yes, for sure. You know, the repair can be that, or we'll do repairs, but we'd like to go to the yard, spend a day or two days out there, right? Not just run out back and forth to do one. We have a lot of customers that like that because they don't want to move five trucks, right? It's very difficult. Especially in Texas right now. Have you seen the highways? Everything's under repair. I'm sure it's that way in other states too.
Sure. Talk about technologies and your relationship with the OEMs regarding things like predictive maintenance and the amount of data that you can get from your trucks, through the OEM, to help with things like predictive maintenance and advanced slotting in your service base.
Right. I would tell you we're not where we need to be. Now we have our own, we got close to 40,000 trucks that we've got Geotab on, right? That we help manage different things for them, right? If I told you what Rush Care is, there's 25 people that are managing different fleets, accounts, and also handling parts stuff and everything else there at the corporate office, right? So we will continue to offer that. When it comes to your big fleets, they still like to do most all their own maintenance, right? Because they've got shops. You know, I know there's some OEMs that have come over and said, you know, well, we're going to bundle it up and do all this, more of a European style model. It hasn't taken effect like that. I mean, we've got, oh, I got 2,000 units under contract maintenance.
That's not really a lot, but that's in our PACCAR leasing operations where we have 10,000 units in our leasing operations. People sometimes realize that. But we will, you know, it will gradually get there, but it's hard to do it with, especially with the big guys. Now the middle size, we do have some success, but all your big public carriers have, they're going to do, most of them are going to do their own maintenance. I don't care what you try to tell, you know, because that's what they've historically done. And they've already got the assets, right? Now repair stuff is different. That's where we come in with the mobile repair type stuff, but mobile maintenance is a little bit hard different. When it's just a harder sell because they've been doing it that way for years and they've already got the assets out there doing it.
If I'm thinking about you from a portfolio standpoint, obviously you have as many Peterbilt dealerships as you can have. What's the appetite to.
We'll see. Okay. You're right. You're right.
You have as many Peterbilt, Peterbilt dealerships as you're able to have right now. Allegedly.
That's what's, well, but.
You have your International brand dealerships and a variety of others. What's the M&A appetite to expand your breadth of vehicles that you're selling?
Right. I would tell you from an M&A perspective, we had an offsite call back in June, strategic, you know, meeting. We decided to take a little more proactive approach. Typically, if someone's going to sell a truck to their job, I'm probably going to know them. Okay. I'm going to get a phone call because I'm limited, right? I'm not going to get, you know, a Freightliner. Remember, you got a right of first refusal in all your franchise agreements. Freightliner or Volvo, they're not going to put up with me. They're just not going to, and rightfully so. I was looking at Mario.
Everybody that doesn't follow your company as closely as some of the others. Your PACCAR.
Yes.
Your Freightliner.
No, I'm international.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You're old. You were 10% of there yourself.
I was going to say International.
Okay. Yeah. Now you're going way back.
All right. Thanks. What happens when someone that has that kind of a, are you looking to add more? What are the limitations to adding PACCAR dealerships?
The PACCAR stuff, as I said, there's a right of first refusal in the contract. They're, so we're anywhere from 28%, depending on the year, 28% to close to 30% of their production. There's no car, no truck, no equipment manufacturer that one distributor runs 30% of their stuff. Okay. I would love to have more, but you know, it's, you know, it's that relationship you have with your franchisor, you know, there's a dog with a tail, tail like dog. People get concerned that we got.
Go to ATA. You went there.
Yep.
The railroads are starting to merge, go cross country. We're trying to bring more manufacturing to the U.S.
Yes, sir.
Get tonnages down.
Yes, sir.
On the other side, I, I'm a truck company and I don't have the cash flow, but I can write off 100% of my purchases. That's a big plus. How do I put it all together for 2028? Not 2026, because that one, you know, your stock will reflect that on the downside.
I would imagine most of the large public carriers have those type of three-year plans from now, right? How do you put it all together? Most of your better companies, they will, they do not pre-buy that much, right? Because you, so you have got emissions coming, right? Some guys just go crazy back in the past when you have emission regulation changes. Most of the ones I know, they will buy a little, you know, but you are not going to, because you have got a cycle, right? You cannot be loaded, you know, too much in one area. I expect a little bit of pickup at 35. I expect people, there is a little pull forward. I know you are talking about 28, Mario. I will get to it in the 26, but we need a little help from the economy.
Look, what I have been trying to figure out, and I asked some people, there is this truckload space versus LTL, right? The dynamics have changed, right? You know, back in the day, they were running 1,200 mi and 800 mi and 600 mi. And average haul now for a TL guy is down like this, but yet they do not, you know, you know, you know, it is much a bigger barrier for entry into LTL. Why? You have got to have doors. You have got to have doors to be able to, you know, box and move and ship all that, repackage that stuff. I am trying to figure out what is going on. I am going to be honest with you, because I would not have expected it to last three years like this, even with flat tonnage. I would not have expected it.
There was too much capacity. You know, we real, I do not have the answers. The dynamics have changed in distribution, but something is going on, from a TL perspective. I think that is why you see, I do not call them by name, let us say take a Knight-Swift, right? They got into LTL four years ago, right? You know, there is a balancing act, I think, between all that for some organizations, as they look at it, the landscape, you know, but TL, when it is right, it is really good. You make a lot of money. When it is bad, it can be really tough. You look at where the rates have gone, especially after, you know, after 2021, 2022, and there was a bunch of private purchases and freight was pulled.
Remember, just because tonnage was there, does not mean that for our guys were carrying it all. Okay. There was a lot of buying from private, right? So they were yet, besides what, besides tonnage being flat, you have got a lot of it being shifted. That was not helping the last couple of years either.
I actually think we're bubbling up against time.
I know. I rambled too long.
No, not even with a lot of content that was said. I always appreciate, greatly, the insight. So thank you very much for being here, and I hope you enjoy.
We did not even talk about the parts and service business, but that's okay.
What's that?
We didn't, we didn't even talk about parts and service, but that's okay. That's 60% plus of what we do.
That is what I was trying to get to with the mobile side and then.
The mobile is one piece of it. Overall parts and services remain flat. A little bit of seasonality I just saw in October. Typically, we're backwards 3%, a little less working days, 5% from a margin perspective, gross, gross profit, not margin, but gross profit. In the winter months, you know, November, December, January, February. It looks like fairly in line. I would like to have had an uptake. The one good thing real quick, and then I'll get off.
No, just great.
We're going to think about it like this. You know, we're talking about trucks. You had capacity. You've got capacity coming out here. Guess what? You start, you're building less trucks here. Your intake is right here. You should start miling up trucks a lot more, right? That would be a normal thing to think if you get back to it. That's why I think, you know, it's a rough couple of quarters for the industry, but I think that will help smooth it out. I do believe, but people have been tight on parts and service then. When you see some of those reports that are bracketed for the big TL guys and stuff, they got to manage your business, right? I get that. You got less mi.
If you're not running stuff, something's on the fence, you know, if you're not, if that's what you're dealing with, that's historically the way it's always happened. Parts and service remain flat. That's super important because I think like last quarter, 63% or 64% of our gross profit comes from there, right? Yeah. We still love to sell trucks. It's a part of, that's one thing, we don't just haul freight. We have many different avenues of revenue. We are a great leasing organization. We do really well in it, sometimes underappreciated, you know, and then, you know, the diversification whether it's parts, service, new, used, this, that, or the other. You try to shift, right? You try to stay balanced also in your market segments, but it's vocational, it's refuse, it's construction, it's this, it's the mid-size carrier, it's the people buying stuff out of stock too.
You just try to blend it all, right? You can weather the ups and downs. I think if you'll look back at the last five years of the company, we will weather pretty much the up and down a whole lot different than we could when that young man right there was an investor for me 25 years ago.
Okay. All right.
Thank you, Mario.
Yeah.
You got it. I'm with you. That's what I tell RP. I say that I know they're right behind me. I saw it two weeks ago. That's what he always says. Got to do it more. So anyway.
Rusty, thank you very much.
You bet. Always.