By Nick Carey
DETROIT, March 4 (Reuters) - North American orders for Class8 semi-trucks jumped more than 76 percent in February astrucking companies rushed to add capacity in a tight U.S.freight market, FTR, a company that tracks the industry, said onSunday.
Preliminary orders in the United States, Canada and Mexicofor the big rigs that haul freight along North American highwayshit 40,200 trucks, up from 22,886 in February 2017, the secondconsecutive month that orders exceeded 40,000 units.
"The capacity crunch is transforming into a capacity crisisand many fleets of all sizes, in all markets, across the countryare scrambling to add trucks as fast as they can," Don Ake, FTRvice president of commercial vehicles, said in a statement.
Many rail and truck freight customers are grappling with howto defend their profit margins as transportation costs climb atnearly double the inflation rate. said the ongoing crunch in U.S. freight capacity appearsto be exacerbated by a federal mandate that truck firms switchto electronic logs (ELDs) from paper logs, which into effect inDecember.
With few exceptions, vehicle operators have until April 1 tocomply with the ELD mandate.
Experts have predicted many smaller trucking outfits thathave fudged the books in order to stay profitable in alow-margin industry will close up shop, benefiting largercompanies and driving up demand for new vehicles.
"It looks like fleets held back some orders from the fourthquarter to see if freight growth would continue and if ELDs werefinal," Ake said. "Now that the environment is more certain, theorders have been pouring in."
February orders were "sturdy across the board for allmarkets and truck types," FTR said.
Full-year 2017 orders for Class 8 trucks came in at 290,000units compared with 164,000 in 2016. The United States is by farthe largest market in North America.
The main truck makers in the U.S. market are Daimler AG DAIGn.DE , Navistar International Corp NAV.N , Paccar Inc PCAR.O and Volvo AB VOLVb.ST .