Which truck makers can claim the largest share of trucks on the road? How did 2020 have an impact on those rankings?  Discover the largest truck brands within the US.

FleetSeek’s team of dedicated analysts has done the research to bring you the answers. We leveraged a combination of crash and inspection data published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration1, which we used as a proxy for vehicles on the road. Based on VINs and other information reported, we extracted data for just medium-duty (classes 4 to 6) and heavy-duty (classes 7 and 8) trucks and tractors, which for simplicity’s sake we will be referring to as medium-duty trucks and heavy-duty trucks. We further limited the data to only those vehicles from for hire, private, and owner-operator fleets.  

While the following analysis highlights the top truck and tractor makes in 2019 and 2020, current brand affinity data is available within the FleetSeek application, including the ability to filter by brand name and view details at an individual fleet level.

Overall Truck and Tractor Rankings: Freightliner grew its share of trucks on the road in 2020 

Freightliner, Peterbilt, International, Kenworth, and Volvo were the top five most popular truck and tractor brands on the road in the U.S. in both 2019 and 2020. These top five brands accounted for more than 80% of the vehicles observed in both years. Kenworth edged International out for the third-place ranking in 2020, mostly due to International’s dip in prevalence from 2019 to 2020.

These overall rankings are heavily weighted toward heavy-duty truck manufacturers, thanks to more than 86% of the observations coming from class 7 and class 8 vehicles. To help us understand the rankings at a more nuanced level we have broken the data out by heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks.

Heavy Duty Truck Manufacturers: Volvo moved up in 2020, while International slipped

Given that heavy-duty trucks make up so much of the overall data, it is no surprise that the top five manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks on the road are the same as we saw before. These five brands accounted for more than 90% of the heavy-duty trucks on the road in both 2019 and 2020. Here we can see that International again slipped in rankings from 2019 to 2020, this time freeing up the fourth-place spot for Volvo.

Medium-Duty Truck Manufacturers: Ford took over top ranking in 2020

Switching our focus to medium-duty trucks, we can see that International and Freightliner were still among the top five, but Peterbilt, Kenworth, and Volvo were replaced in the list by Ford, Hino, and Isuzu. These top five manufacturers accounted for more than 85% of the medium-duty trucks on the road in both 2019 and 2020.

As with the overall results and the results for heavy-duty trucks, we see that International lost ground from 2019 to 2020, this time making room at the top of the list for Ford, despite Ford’s share of medium-duty trucks on the road dropping a bit from 2019 to 2020. At the bottom of the list, we also see that Hino overtook Isuzu for the fourth-place ranking.

For Hire, Private, and Owner Operator Fleet Breakouts

Below we can see the share of medium and heavy-duty trucks on the road broken out by for hire, private, and owner-operator fleets.

On the heavy-duty truck side, we can see that for hire and owner-operator fleets had the same top five brands as we saw for heavy-duty trucks overall. Looking at private fleets, however, we see that Mack is included at the number four spot, with more trucks observed than International in both 2019 and 2020.

On the medium-duty truck side, for hire and private fleets include the same top five brands as we reported for medium-duty trucks overall. Owner-operator fleets, however, have Dodge included at number four pushing Isuzu out of the top five.

For all of the breakouts below, the top five brands shown made up more than 85% of the observations, demonstrating the dominance of these brands in the medium and heavy-duty truck landscape.

For more information on how FleetSeek’s lead generation, sales, and business intelligence research tool can help your business reach your target market contact your sales rep at 888-665-9887 or [email protected].

References:

[1] Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Motor Carrier Crash Information, https://ask.fmcsa.dot.gov/app/mcmiscatalog/mcmishome