September Vehicle Sales Send Mixed Message

One piece of economic data that got reported late last week that is worth following up on is the monthly tally of heavy truck (red) and car sales (blue, right scale):

Both of these are leading indicators, but heavy truck sales are less noisy, and generally signal first (although, like the unemployment rate, they lag significantly coming out of recessions).

In any event, in September car sales were 16.0 million annualized, while heavy truck sales declined sharply in the month to 396,000. Car sales were therefore right in the middle of their range over the last three years, while truck sales are back down into recessionary territory (more than -10% from their recent peak) for the second month in a row. Here’s the zoomed in post-pandemic view that shows the situation a little more clearly:

Without confirmation from car sales, truck sales are not forecasting an imminent recession, but count this as a negative indicator.