Fleet Equipment & Manufacturers Analysis

Analysis

· as of April 17, 2026

The most notable pattern in the FMCSA equipment data is not Freightliner's market leadership, which is well-established, but the pronounced bimodal shape of the truck age distribution. Model year 2022 trucks number 293,059, model year 2020 trucks number 341,459, and model year 2019 trucks number 333,769, forming a dense cluster of equipment purchased during the freight boom years. By contrast, model year 2021 trucks total only 223,540, a drop of roughly 117,000 units compared to 2020 that is consistent with the supply chain disruptions and OEM production constraints documented industry-wide during that period. The fleet did not simply age uniformly; there is a visible dip in the 2021 cohort sandwiched between two larger ones, suggesting purchasing patterns were distorted rather than gradual. Among manufacturers, the divergence between carrier penetration and unit count is worth noting. Ford ranks sixth by truck count at 309,177 units but is distributed across 144,215 carriers, a ratio of roughly 2.1 trucks per carrier, far lower than Freightliner's 4.1 trucks per carrier across 301,897 carriers. This likely reflects Ford's concentration in smaller, non-CDL commercial fleets rather than large truckload or LTL operations. Peterbilt carries the oldest average model year among the top-five OEMs at 2015, one to two years behind Freightliner and Volvo, both at 2017, which may indicate slower replacement cycles among Peterbilt-heavy fleets or a larger base of legacy equipment that has not yet turned over. On the trailer side, tank trailers average a 2012 model year against reefer and flatbed-tag averages of 2017, a five-year gap that is consistent with the longer service lives typical of tank equipment. Across the full dataset, the weighted average truck model year of 2016 means a large share of the active fleet is approaching or beyond ten years of service as of the data cutoff in April 2026, a position the fleet has held for most of the past decade.