CDK Heavy Truck released its 2024 Heavy Truck State of the Industry survey at its Truck Connect user conference recently.
The report was the result of a survey of 122 heavy truck dealership employees. They were asked about challenges past, present and future, and how to overcome those challenges.
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Still a top pain point for heavy duty dealers, staffing shortages were named as a top challenge by 55% of heavy truck dealers, down slightly from 64% last year. More dealers also named inflation and a recession impacting demand as a top challenge (43% versus 38% last year), and 39% said interest rates were a top challenge when last year it didn't make the list.
Supply chain issues seem to be easing, according to the survey. In 2023, 51% of surveyed dealers said parts supply was a challenge, but this year, that fell to 32%. Employee burnout remained a top challenge as well, but fell from 33% last year to 275 this year. Around a quarter of surveyed dealers — 24% — said complex truck technology is a top challenge, another challenge that didn't rise to last year's list.
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The survey showed more than half respondents who identified their dealerships as innovators are early adopters plan to invest in training for new truck technologies. Almost half of dealerships who identified in the early majority, late majority or laggard categories said the same thing.
Both groups see changes in pricing strategies as key to overcoming challenges. Almost half, 49%, of each group said they planned to change prices to confront issues this year. More than half of the trendsetters said they plan to make changes in hiring practices, compared to 41% of the status quo dealers. And about half of status quo dealers said they plan to reduce excess costs. Trendsetters did not name that as a top strategy for facing challenges.
As dealers across the board tackled pricing strategies, a whopping 92% saw success in with compensation changes when facing staffing shortages. Some dealers (72%) used benefit changes, another three-quarters of trendsetting dealers found success visiting high schools, technical schools or community colleges (that falls to 53% for status quo dealers); and more status quo dealers saw success with third-party search and recruiting firms (73%, versus 60% of trendsetters).
The economy tops business concerns for the coming year, with 51% of dealers expecting inflation and recession fears will continue to impact customers. A little less than half, 42%, of dealers expect volatile interest rates to continue to be a challenge while just more than a third (35%) expect retaining customers to be a challenge.
