Fleet Equipment & Manufacturers Analysis

Analysis

· as of July 1, 2026

The most telling pattern in the FMCSA equipment registry is not who leads the market but how old the fleet actually is. Despite a weighted average model year of 2016 across approximately 4.16 million registered trucks, the age distribution reveals a pronounced concentration of units in the 6-to-10-year range, with model years 2016 through 2020 collectively accounting for roughly 1.39 million trucks. At the same time, more than 480,000 trucks carry a model year of 2006 or earlier, a tail that is inconsistent with a fleet undergoing steady, uniform renewal. The 2007 model year alone accounts for 138,069 trucks, a number larger than several full model-year cohorts from 2021 to 2023, which is consistent with the well-documented pre-emissions-regulation production surge ahead of the 2007 EPA standards. On the manufacturer side, Freightliner's 30.0% share spans 301,897 carriers, while Kenworth's 13.3% share covers 181,467 carriers and Peterbilt's 12.1% covers 160,931 carriers. The combined Daimler-Paccar block therefore accounts for roughly 55% of registered trucks. International, at 11.7% and 162,922 carriers, holds nearly as many carrier relationships as Kenworth despite a lower total truck count, suggesting broader penetration among smaller fleets operating fewer units per carrier. The trailer side shows a different composition dynamic: the combined flatbed and tag-trailer category totals approximately 744,000 units against 434,800 refrigerated trailers, a ratio that may indicate the continued weight of construction and industrial freight in the carrier base relative to food and temperature-sensitive supply chains. Tank trailers average a 2012 model year, the oldest of any tracked category at roughly 14 years, which is consistent with longer asset-life norms in liquid bulk but may also reflect constrained capital deployment in that segment over the past decade. Across the full registry, the fleet age profile as of mid-2026 reflects a decade in which replacement cycles were compressed by supply chain disruptions and then partially accelerated by record OEM order books in 2021 and 2022, though the long tail of pre-2010 units suggests attrition has not kept pace with new registrations over a 15-year horizon.