SANDUSKY, Ohio—For decades, the commercial vehicle market has been marked by dramatic sales cycles: The highs were high, and the lows were low, and that’s the way it was. But according to Andrew Wrobel, commercial vehicle insights director for NTEA, the work truck sector is “coming out from underneath the cloud of uncertainty” that has followed the pandemic and appears to be heading toward a “new normal” in incomplete-chassis sales, one that trades dramatic peaks and valleys for mellow plateaus.

“We're not going to get back to what we had before,” Wrobel said during a presentation at the NTEA Upfitters Summit at the Kalahari Convention Center in Sandusky. In this new era, he said, year-over-year sales of incomplete chassis will vary by only plus or minus 3%.

“We're not expecting any explosive growth; we're not expecting a massive decline to occur.”

These vehicles include conventional chassis cabs, low cab forwards, stripped chassis and cutaway vans—incomplete vehicles that require a body to be installed before final-stage certification, Wrobel explained.

That’s not to say certain quarters won't be better than others.

“We may have quarters or months or periods where we have some pretty big growth that happens within there, but overall, when we look at [new chassis sales] from a yearly perspective, year-over-year growth or decline is going to be somewhere in that [+/-3%] range.”

Wrobel told Fleet Maintenance that this new normal, with more modest growth in new-truck sales, will put greater emphasis on maintenance strategies.

“As fleets age, maintenance requirements would typically increase,” he said. “With no anticipated significant increase in new vehicle sales growth, it’s expected that maintenance will continue to increase as the overall vehicle population continues to age.”

According to ACT Research, the average age of a U.S. Class 8 truck is 6.3 years, the highest since 2013.

Looking ahead

Wrobel forecasts that 2026 will be a 3% growth year for incomplete-chassis sales, though sales were down year over year during the first half. His initial forecast in January called for 5% growth, with a potential increase of 12% depending on the Class 8 prebuy.

Based on data through July, incomplete-chassis sales were down 2.4% year to date, improving from a 5.5% decline, Wrobel said.

“Preliminary numbers that I've seen for August and September that we have right now are showing a continued trend towards positive,” he said. “October was actually a particularly bad month in 2025, and we are not expecting to have that this year.”

Commercial van chassis sales were up 7.5%, while tractor sales were down 16.3%.

For 2027, Wrobel expects the market to remain relatively flat, with sales moving up or down by about 1%.

The overall economy continues to grow, though more slowly than earlier in the year. Real gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 1.5% in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, down from 2.5% in the first quarter. Unemployment remained relatively stable, at 4.3% in May, 4.1% in July and August, and 4.2% in September.

Energy prices remain a source of inflationary pressure. The consumer price index rose 3.7% year over year in September, while the energy index climbed 20.4% and gasoline prices rose 34.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wrobel cited oil prices of $92 per barrel in August and warned that further increases could add to inflationary pressure.

Despite the headwinds, Wrobel expects the year to finish strong, in part because of December sales.

“A lot of businesses close out the year at the end of December,” Wrobel said. “If they have extra funds, they'll put that into capitalized purchases for tax benefits, among other things. So December is usually one of the strongest months of the year.”

That can leave January weaker by comparison.

Keeping inventory on track

Less than 10 miles west of the Upfitter Summit's venue, at Cedar Point, impossibly steep hills are all the rage. But outside the amusement park industry, being on top of the world one second and hurtling toward the ground the next is typically something to avoid. That's why Wrobel sees a flatter sales cycle as a positive development for the commercial truck market: It allows sales and shipments to sync up.

“This industry is most successful when we sell what we build, or we build the right number of trucks that are required to sell,” Wrobel said.

Building too many vehicles creates risk as inventory sits on dealer lots waiting to be sold. Too little inventory, meanwhile, forces fleets to wait for trucks and limits the industry's ability to expand.

As the graph below shows, the industry has fallen into this risky pattern before.

“We put ourselves as an industry into a bit of an inventory problem where we were building way too many trucks for what we sold,” Wrobel said.

That imbalance led to shipments dropping 20% year over year in 2025. Wrobel said the industry is correcting course in 2026, with shipments leveling out.

“It's not too many times that I stand up here and say, ‘Hey, -20% is a good thing, but this has definitely been one of those times,” Wrobel said. “We're starting to see a trend where shipments are coming up, but they're going at the same rate right now as sales, which is really good news.”

According to NTEA Chassis Data, year-to-date sales and shipments through July were:

Chassis: Sales: -2.4% | Shipments: +1%

Vans: Sales: +7.4% | Shipments: +3.8%

Tractors: Sales: -16.3% | Shipments: +5.9%

Vans, which had been overbuilt for years, are returning to more sustainable levels, Wrobel said.

Zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) are gaining share among complete commercial vehicles, but adoption remains limited among incomplete chassis. New Classes 2-8 registration data from Mobility Global show ZEVs account for roughly 4% of complete vehicles in 2026, while their share of incomplete vehicles remains below 1%.

“What we're looking at right now, from a zero-emission vehicle perspective, is not necessarily bad news,” Wrobel offered, saying the new technology was previously pushed by regulations, and sales now reflect a true consumer pull. He noted that ZEV powertrains do really excel in certain use cases.

Hybrids may also find new life in the work truck space, as these assets need power for more than just propulsion.

“There are many different use cases that could use hybrid battery power to run other vehicle operations, and I think that's going to be one of the keys that we start to see,” Wrobel said. “Fuel economy and emissions regulations are not going to go away. They are going to continue to get more stringent.”