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This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Rush Enterprises operates as an integrated retailer of commercial vehicles and related services via its subsidiaries in the U.S. and Canada. Its Rush Truck Centers are a network of commercial dealerships, primarily selling vehicles manufactured by companies including Peterbilt, International, Ford, Blue Bird, and Battle Motors. The company also offers vehicle service and repair, financing, leasing, rental services, and car insurance.

Q1 2026

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Q4 2024

Rush Enterprises (RUSHB): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Rush Enterprises

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Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Rush Enterprises report first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and answer-session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Rusty Rush, Chairman, CEO, and President. Please go ahead.

Well, good morning, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings release call. With me on the call this morning are Steve Keller, Chief Financial Officer, Jody Pollard, our Chief Operating Officer, Jay Hazelwood, Vice President and Controller, and Michael Goldstone, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. Before I get started, Steve will say a few words regarding forward-looking statements.

Certain statements we will make today are considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because these statements include risk and uncertainties, our actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to those discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2025 and in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Thank you, Steve, and thanks everyone for joining us today. As we reported yesterday, we generated revenues $1.68 billion in the first quarter, with net income of $61.5 million or $0.77 per diluted share. We also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.19 per share, which reflects our continued focus on returning value to shareholders. Now, stepping back for a minute, the first quarter was still a tough environment for the commercial vehicle market. Industry-wide retail sales for new trucks remained at historically low levels, and we're still working through the effects of the freight recession, excess capacity, and general economic uncertainty. That said, we do believe this quarter represents the trough of the cycle.

More importantly, we're starting to see some early signs that things are moving in the right direction. Freight rates improved a bit, miles driven began to pick up, and customer sentiment started to feel a little more optimistic. As a result, we saw increased quoting activity and order intake as the quarter progressed, especially from our large fleet customers. That hasn't translated into sustained strength in truck sales yet, but it's a good leading indicator and gives us confidence that demand is starting to come back.

One thing that stood out again this quarter is the strength of our business model. Even with soft truck sales, our aftermarket leasing and rental businesses, along with disciplined expense management, helped us stay very profitable and perform well overall. We also stayed focused on growing the business. During the quarter, we signed an agreement to acquire Peterbilt dealerships in Southern Louisiana and Mississippi. We expect to close that deal and begin operating those locations as Rush Truck Centers in June.

Even in a down cycle, we continue to invest in the business, expanding into new markets and positioning ourselves for long-term growth. Our aftermarket business continues to be a key strength for us. It made up roughly 66% of our gross profit in the quarter and generated $627 million in revenue, up slightly year-over-year. Demand was still soft in certain segments, excuse me, especially with some of our over-the-road customers. Overall, we were able to deliver growth, which speaks to the strength of our relationships and our execution. We also start to see some positive indicators here, more freight activities and more miles being driven, which should translate into stronger parts and service demand as customers begin catching up on deferred maintenance.

Our aftermarket strategic initiatives are also making a difference. Our inspection processes and parts delivery optimization have gained traction across our network and are delivering incremental revenue, increasing uptime for our customers and delivering a better experience overall. Looking ahead, we expect the aftermarket to gradually improve as we move through the year and continue to be a key driver for our performance.

Turning to truck sales, the market was still very tough in the first quarter, with Class 8 industry sales at their lowest level since COVID. Even in that environment, we performed well. We sold 2,964 Class 8 trucks in the U.S. and captured a 7.2% market share. That really comes down to execution, having the right inventory and the diversity of our customer base. As I mentioned earlier, we saw solid order activity and increased engagement from customers during the quarter. We think that's being driven by improving freight conditions and customers beginning to plan for 2027 engines emissions regulations. Class 4 through 7 truck sales saw the worst demand since 2015, but our results were more about timing than demand. Some large fleet customers pushed deliveries into later in the year, so we expect that to benefit us in the coming quarter.

Used truck demand improved as we moved through the quarter, and we're seeing better conditions tied to improving spot rates and tighter capacity. Overall, while the Q1 was slow, we expect sales to improve gradually in the Q2 and then pick up more in the second half of the year.

Rental and leasing continue to be strong and a growing part of our business. Revenue was $92 million in the quarter, up a little over 2% year-over-year. Leasing demand remains strong as customers look to replace aging equipment and get ahead of cost increases tied to the upcoming emissions regulations. Rental is below where we'd like it to be, driven by current market conditions, but it did improve as the quarter progressed, and we expect utilization to continue trending up through the year. Overall, Rush Truck Leasing continues to generate consistent, reoccurring revenue and remains an important contributor to our performance.

To wrap it up, the first quarter reflected the ongoing pressure from the freight recession and weak truck demand, but we delivered solid earnings and profitability. That speaks to the strength and balance of our business. We believe we're at the bottom of the cycle, and we're encouraged by early signs we are seeing, whether that's freight, customer activity or order trends. As conditions continue to improve, we believe we're well positioned to capture that demand and grow the business. Before I close, I want to thank our employees across the company. Their focus, discipline and commitment to our customers continue to drive our performance, especially in a very challenging environment like this. With that, I'll take your questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. You'll hear the automated message advising your hand is raised. We also ask that you please wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your question. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question for the day will be coming from the line of Avi Jaroslawicz of UBS. Your line is open.

Glad to see that the year is still on track for improvement sequentially. You know, just thinking about the second half here, it sounds like there's still a decent amount of uncertainty around the pre-buy for this year on just a number of fronts. You know, whether the OEMs are gonna have new engines ready and how the rules are gonna be enforced and the dynamic.

Demand dynamics around that. Can you just give us a rundown on how those different moving parts are shaping your expectations?

That's a good statement there, Avi. It's kinda crazy, isn't it? We're, what are we? We're April 30th tomorrow, we got eight months left in the year, we still don't have definitive regulations printed. Okay. When I'm talking about emissions regulations, they have sent out signals and told people, the EPA has, of what they're going to do, right? They're gonna keep, supposedly, a 0.35, they have not clarified about credits, et cetera, if there's gonna be NCPs, things like that. We're probably still 60 days away from it. Regardless of that, we do know that there are gonna be new emissions regulations, you know? I think that's spurred customers to go ahead.

You know, order activity, as you can see, starting in December, has been up dramatically from where it was the prior seven or eight months, from an order intake. You know, even with that uncertainty, you know, there is certainty of something going down. Exactly what it is, we're not exactly sure because it hasn't been posted by the EPA yet. You know, we'll still have to follow that and see. We hope to know within the next 45-60 days. If I told you that 45 days ago and held my breath, I wouldn't be in very good shape 'cause I told you I'd known by now. The can gets keep getting kicked down the road a little bit. I think the most important thing is that, you know, customers' business is people are more optimistic.

Finally, because of the contraction on the supply side, right, of taking, you know, trucks out, whether it was through non-domiciled, whether it was building less trucks in the back half of last year, building less trucks in the first quarter of this year. We slowed the intake down, we, you know, the supply side squeezed down. Customers are more optimistic about rates, you know. Coming in, if you'd asked me three or four months ago, everybody said, I know this isn't one of your questions, but you know me, I'm gonna ramble on, that, you know, we're gonna be flat to low singles, then it was mid-singles, now people are looking at maybe high single-digit increases. People are optimistic.

At the same time, to your point about emissions, not knowing clearly what it's gonna be, what the state is, but we do know it's going to be worse. Whether there would be NOx credits and the cost would go up dramatically or the total enforcement of what's out there for EPA 2027. That's about the best thing I can tell you, is there's still uncertainty, but you know something's coming down the tracks, right? You just don't know exactly what.

Got it. Appreciate that, Rusty. Just to follow on a point there, thinking about the improving conditions within the freight market, as you just noted, really more driven by supply reductions, capacity reductions, that doesn't necessarily help the parts and service side as much as improving freight activity. What are you seeing there, and when do you think we might see parts and service volumes inflect positively?

Yeah. You know, it's funny. You know, people theoretically, you know, people believe that when truck sales go down, okay, that you're going to get more parts and service. Well, that's not really actually the case because people are cutting back their budgets and things, and that's what we've seen, right? That's why we've been fairly flat over the last couple, three quarters, right? Even in spite of inflation, we've remained flat. That's because people have tightened their belts. The best thing I can see is for their business to get better, right? Historically, when, you know, customers feel better about looking forward and are more optimistic, there will be no postponing of any maintenance or any repairs. It's just like anything, you know. When, when your income level goes down, you learn how to take your outcome, what you spend down too.

It's no different than you as a person, you know, managing your household. That's what customers have done. The most encouraging thing for me is going to be when hopefully seeing second and third quarter releases and hearing about contract rates going up so that optimism that we see out there, you know, comes to fruition, is the best way I can describe it. We expect to. I would tell you this, we've been going slightly, and I'm not happy with it, but we have gradually gone January. February was better than January. March was better than February. April looks like it's gonna be a little bit better than March. I think as conditions improve, not just truck sales, but obviously parts and service too, will improve with that.

It's just a matter because, you know, tonnage has gone up. Tonnage was up for the first time, I think, in two or three years in February, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure where it was in March. You know, it is getting a little bit better, not just from the supply side, but I think on the other side of the house. We've got a lot of outliers out there. I don't have to tell you what's going on overseas and fuel and all this other stuff. The general macro, I think, environment for continued improvement at the customer level is it's there without any interruptions from outside geopolitics or something like that. I mean, I just do believe that things are going to be better.

I believe we're gonna be up in some areas. It's gonna build through the year. Because we're on it, and I believe it's not gonna go away in 2027. My personal belief is I see a nice, a pretty good four-month run anyway. I'm not gonna try to forecast outside of a year, but I feel pretty good about where it is. It's just going to be a gradual. I just believe it's gonna continue to get better based upon conversations I have with many customers and, you know, people around the industry.

All right. Appreciate that perspective. Thank you, Rusty.

Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question is going to be coming from the line of Brady Lierz of Stephens. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Morning, Rusty. Thanks for taking our questions.

You mentioned that you expect overall commercial vehicle sales to improve gradually. Could you just help us break that out between, you know, your heavy-duty and your medium/light-duty? Just because, you know, because of the weakness in the medium-duty in the first quarter, like should we see a more immediate recovery in that versus Class 8? Just any clarity around kind of breaking out those two trends would be helpful.

Yeah. Sequentially, yes, because it was so off in Q1, right?

Sometimes you can get numerator or denominator, right? From a percentage basis, yeah, you're gonna see medium improve quicker because heavy-duty obviously wasn't off as bad as the market. We were off, what, 6%, market was 20%-21%. We were off way off in medium, and a lot of it was timing. Sequentially, medium will pick up quicker because we're starting at a lower base, right? If you wanna talk about sequential. If I was to look out for the year, I expect a better year on the Class 8 side up over the last year than maybe medium will be closer. It'll catch back up to flat maybe for the year. That, you know, that bodes pretty well for the next few quarters because we started such a hole on the medium-duty side.

I expect heavy-duty to, you know, continue to ramp up. If you want me to throw a number out, say heavy-duty is up 15% in Q2. If things hold together and we get, you know, get through all this emissions clarification and business continues to look better for our customer base, both across the board vocationally and, you know, over-the-road. Over-the-road is what we've talked about mainly, you know, even though we do a lot of vocational business, over-the-road is still the biggest market that's out there, right? You're talking two-thirds of the market. If that continues to get better for that customer base, you know, we will continue to increase quarter by quarter as the year goes.

I believe for sure roll into Q1, because remember, from an emissions perspective, you know, it's all about when the engine was built and usually, I don't wanna get in the weeds. You know, usually those engines will be built maybe halfway through January of next year. Because we are the retailer and it takes anywhere from 32 days to five months, depending on the type of product it is, if there, you know, that bodes well for us all the way through next year in Q1. If the economy is in good shape and the business is still aligned.

Look, the number that's gonna come out this year probably is not gonna be anything more than a normal replacement. The deal is it's gonna be backloaded, right. I mean, 41,000 units was all Class 8. It was COVID, second quarter of 2020, I think it was. Second or third quarter of 2020, that's the lowest in six years. Medium was the lowest since 2015. It wasn't just us, even though we were a little worse on medium side.

When you think about it, with that emissions regulations and improving business conditions, economic conditions for our customer base, as long as the geopolitical things stay out of the way, I mean, it's set there to just ramp up slowly. It's not gonna be an add water and stir thing just in Q2, but you better believe Q2 better be better than Q1. It's not gonna improve dramatically, but it's gonna build. I believe that's the case across our whole business model, right? I really do. I feel good.

There's not one segment that I can sit here right now and tell you I feel bad about. You know, I feel good. I'm not gonna sit here and feel great like that, but I feel good about the whole thing. I wanna watch it continue to evolve. We're still working business, okay? We really are. We've had really, as I've said, we've had nice order intake, with the majority of it gonna start coming in in Q2. I said maybe up 15% on Class 8 and, you know, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but somewhere in that range.

As timing rolls into all these things too. It should build from there through the rest of the year and through Q1 anyway, for sure. Typically, hopefully, our parts and service will build. As I told you, it has been slowly building. I'm looking forward to seeing it ramp up a little faster, but, you know, I don't always have my finger on that trigger.

Makes sense. Thank you for all that color. Maybe I just, for my second question, just wanted to follow up on an earlier one and maybe ask about it from a different angle. You know, just the reduction in capacity in the freight market driving the improvement, how do you think, if at all, that affects new truck sales this cycle? You know, is that a headwind or does the emission regulation offset that? Just any thoughts around this kind of competing dynamics would be helpful.

Okay. Well, you know, the, you know, the first thing was supply, right? You really want the environment to be better from a demand perspective, right? You got supply—

You got demand. To your point about supply. Supply has it's been pulled out for really the last three quarters, okay? If you took the last Q3, Q4, and Q1 and strung them together, it's gonna scare you how low, you know, retail was from a demand perspective, to be honest with you. It would be under 200,000 units in the U.S., okay? Annualized. That has taken the supply up. You need a combination of both, right? It was nice to see that tonnage had bumped up in a couple other months. I think it was February, I'm not mistaken. Even though it's not robust, you know, you got both of those. I believe it will continue.

Like I said a minute ago, even if we—there's something like you have $41,000 in the U.S. ACT says it'll be 225, right? That means it's gonna have to average 60. That's a 50% bump of 60 a quarter, it's not gonna be loaded like that. It'll probably be 50 in Q2. That just bumps up Q3 and Q4, right? To even get to that 225, which is really under replacement or right at replacement. It's really under replacement. You know, that is a driver. Three years freight recession, man. I've never seen one like that, right? I felt so sorry for a lot of our customers. I really did. You know, we were fortunate enough with our diversified business model and how we go to market, that we don't rely upon one revenue stream. We just haul freight.

No disrespect to my customer base, but we don't. I've had to watch the suffering for the last three years. It's, you know, it's just. I feel better. I feel good for them. I'm tired of watching all the suffering of that over-the-road segment of the customer base, whether it be the small buyer or the large buyer, across the board. I believe that if demand will hold right, or I can't, I'm not an expert on the demand side. You know, there's too many macroeconomic influences on the demand side. I do know that the average age of fleets is probably a little over a half a year or so more than where it should be, where most people like it.

I mean, I can tell you all these little bitty anecdotes that I've got that make me feel good about it. Like I said, even if we have a big ramp-up and do 60,000 average, 180,000+ in the last three quarters, we're still only gonna be at, you know, replacement cycle. That's not a huge, big pre-buy that should scare you going forward, from my perspective. Which means we should roll through 2026, and there won't be this big drop in 2027. At least that's my viewpoint on the whole thing as I look at it. I know I don't know if I answered your question because sometimes—

I know I might just answer my own question.

No, I think, I think you did. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

We're in good shape. The supply thing's really good because—

The non-domiciled drivers, when we cracked down, it was a bunch of different, you know, antidotes that have helped try to line that up and get it in line. Just because we're gonna have a little pre-buy, it won't be huge, so it won't get out of balance again. We may have some, maybe a couple, three years of nice, you know, growth across that segment. Okay?

Thanks so much for the time this morning, Rusty. I'll pass it along.

Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question is gonna be coming from the line of Andrew Obin of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, Rusty. How are you? Good morning, Steve.

I'm doing well. Maybe we can talk a little bit about, you sort of talked about, parts and services, you know, clearly a focus for the OEM yesterday as well. You know, you have this big initiative with large corporate customers. Can you just talk as to how that initiative is progressing? Do you think you are outgrowing the industry on parts and services? What levers do you have to keep outgrowing the industry? Thank you.

Yeah. I would tell you the first quarter, you know, we were probably close to in line. It's crazy to me what I saw across the first quarter. I'm not talking. I've got pretty good statistics on other dealer groups, okay? We can get through our manufacturers. Probably the hardest hit piece was service. Service was back for us in Q1, that's why maybe our margin mix was down a little bit because it comes into a mix. As you know, your margin's much higher on service than parts. You know, I was nervous. What are we doing wrong, right? Not that. I don't want to ride in the same boat with everybody else, so don't ever expect that.

At least I do know that across what I, what I've been able to track across pretty much a large group of dealers with, you know, that I was able to get their retail environment, service was off across the board 3%-4%. It was off 4% across a group of 200 and some odd dealers. How about that? I have that information. Doesn't make me feel any better. We were off a little less than that. It still was interesting that customer spend was off in Q1. It's just the ending, as I said, tightening your belt, right? People have just tightened their belt the last couple three quarters. When you asked about the initiative, yeah, our initiatives are still there for sure.

We grew our national account business, okay? At the same time, that was on the parts side. I think people really tightened up on the service piece a lot. When I say that, you know, you can extend maintenance, you know, intervals. There's many things you can do. You don't have to fix every oil leak, okay? You don't have to, you know, you can extend your oil change maintenance, your interval 5,000 mi or something. As I said earlier, when things are tight, that's what people do. That's why when their business gets better, people get back into a more normalized, you know, cycle, part of the cycle, what they do normally, right? They're not squeezing it here and there.

I think that's what we saw in Q1, because service was, for us, was down too. Parts was up, but our service wasn't down as the numbers I pulled from some other folks, but it was close. You know, it was just. As people, as their business gets better, they'll get back to more normalized spending cycle. And that's what I expect to happen because that's what I think is people's, you know. The spot market, folks, was up 25%, 30%, okay, year-over-year. That's a good thing, right? The balance between spot and contract got way back, way better, right? Spot was so cheap for so long that people that had contracts weren't using that. They were using the spot market, right? Where they could take advantage, and it just, you know, spiraled down all the rates over the last three years.

You know, getting a better balance across that right now is allowing folks to be more optimistic. When they're optimistic, people spend money, okay. That's just the way it works. You know, when your business gets better, you don't worry about doing things that are out of the norm for you. You know what the right thing is to do. When things are tough, you squeeze. The same thing we do with our business, no different. You know, I just, you know, as I said many times, I just, you know, I love our business model, whether it's through our leasing or our parts or our service or our sales.

We have many different revenue streams that allow us to balance our way through this last three years. Two-thirds of the trucks on the road are over the road, we managed to, you know, produce decent earnings, right? You know, Andrew, I expect parts and service, all of that initiative is still ongoing. As I said, it was up last year on the parts side. The service side has been my most concerning piece, to be honest with you. Parts was slightly up, it will get even better through that initiative and many other initiatives that I'm not gonna talk about, by the way, that we always have ongoing. You've always got to have something going, I can tell you that. We try.

Maybe, Rusty, you know, you have a footprint across the country. You know, you sometimes share with us what you're seeing in terms of macro. Can you just go, A, what are you seeing in terms of macro overall? Just maybe sort of go on key verticals, right? You clearly have big off-road presence. What are we seeing in key off-road verticals? You know, are you seeing any impact in your oil and gas business from higher commodity prices? I think we talked of on road, just maybe give us an overview of what you're seeing from a macro perspective in some of your key verticals.

Sure. Well, geographically, from a spend perspective, I would tell you that we're up slightly in the first quarter, say, in refuse and construction, right? Most of the other is still not as flat, to be honest with you. We haven't seen that. Our national accounts were pretty flat in Q1. They were up last year and we're not keeping up with our plan. Our plan was already in the first quarter. There's not one huge terrible area, Andrew. We still suffer on our unmanaged accounts. That would probably be the one thing. You remember what I've told you about unmanaged accounts before.

That's the small customer, which still makes up 30% or so of our business. I've got to tell you, 34%, it is a little over 30%. It is, even though it was bad last year, it's down almost another 10%, the Q1 of this year. But we've managed to make it up. You know, we managed to make our revenues up, with, you know, in different sectors.

Like I said, really vocational has been probably the biggest thing that we've managed to keep from a parts and service perspective. When I say that, we're talking about refuse, construction, all the vocational businesses from that perspective. Geographically, I would tell you we've seen, you know, Florida continues to be strong. I didn't touch on oil and gas. We haven't seen that big a bump from oil and gas yet, right? We do expect to possibly see something, but it has not come to fruition yet.

You know, I don't want to go through all the regions, but probably, you know, Texas is always, you know, one of the strongest areas we have along with Florida. If I remember right, we were doing fairly well in the Chicago region this year, up in this, you know, Northern Illinois region too also. I don't want to go through 23 states, but I would tell you that, again, I feel good about all of them, that we're going to continue to get gradual improvement without any of this geopolitical stuff getting in the way.

I think, you know, we're lined up for, you know, continued solid, which is actually better than having some huge pre-buy, right? It goes on from a sales perspective or everything else. I just want to see consistent, solid growth and taking share. Taking share is what it's about. Maybe we didn't take as much share as I wanted in Q1. We were slightly better than what I've seen from other boards, but slightly is not good enough. We're focused on continuing to do what we've done in the past. We've got some other initiatives we're rolling out. You know, all I can say is we're ready. We're ready, willing, and able and excited to what I believe is going to be the better environment, as I continue to say, without any interruption from something outside the industry itself.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment for the next question. Our next question will be coming from the line of Cole Couzens of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Yesterday, PACCAR suggested that recent order strength is perhaps a little misleading and that build rates and retail sales remain more muted and thus the pricing backdrop remains more competitive right now. What do you think is driving recent order strengths and how sustainable are current order rates in the coming months?

Good question, right? Because I believe that while not as robust as, say, what we saw in February, which was, you know, what was that, 46,000 or something, like seventh or eighth best month ever, that's happened. I think that was a little overstated, driven by one OEM. I do believe there's strength in the order intake, and I do believe as long as, you know, I keep bringing up this overseas stuff. As long as that doesn't interfere, I believe there's going to be sustainability to continued solid order intake. Now, is that 30,000 a month or something right now? I consider that a pretty good month myself. You know, I don't know.

From our perspective, and I can only speak about from, you know, I can't speak for more than that, but I know that our, what our order intake is, and it continues to remain solid, you know, with a backlog, right? You know, you don't just wake up one morning and somebody orders a truck from you. There's a process you go through, right? From a quoting and a, you know, a competitive dropback. People are still adjusting to all the tariffs, the OEMs, the customers, ourselves, that, you know, now become part of everyday life. At least we've got, you know, at least we know what they are. Our manufacturers understand from their own personal perspective what they are. I believe we're gonna get to see continued.

I can't sit here and tell you it's gonna stay over 35,000 a month, this, that, and the other. If it continues at 25,000-30,000, we didn't have a month like that for, like, seven in a row. We can think back. We started from a low base as far as backlog. I still believe there's going to be continued strength. Maybe not as strong as a couple of the months we've seen, but continued order strength. I think once we continue to get more clarity around emissions and customers' businesses.

Look, we didn't deliver many trucks the last three quarters, right? You know, people, I know some customers have got off a trade cycle last year, right? That did not buy as much, right? What was it last year? Two hundred and—U.S. was 216,000 or something like that. That's under by 20 some odd thousand what replacement is, and it's continued to be under replacement into Q1. Even without all the outside activity, you know, people have to get back replacing trucks.

You know, it's funny to think about it. Probably, I know people thought, am I even gonna be in business? Because that three-year freight recession. All of a sudden you wake up, you're getting more optimistic because you think you're gonna get better rates. They're not going backwards. They've troughed. They're coming back up. You see the spot environment. You go, "Well, I am gonna still be in business, and I do need to buy trucks." Right? I can't be running old trucks all the time with my maintenance charts through to the roof.

I believe there's some natural sustainability to it, and you add in the emissions and other stuff that's coming forward on January 1, and I just believe it's gonna continue to be good. I don't, you know, I don't know. I don't think there's gonna be this huge pre-buy, as I said earlier. You would consider it a pre-buy based upon what the first quarter was, how bad the first quarter retail was and how, well, really Q4, how bad Q4 was, right? You have to get somewhat back in line. The good part is, I don't think it's gonna just be crazy, right?

I think it's just gonna be solid, continued order growth because customers' businesses are getting better, the other outside influence of the emissions, which we, like I said, we'll hopefully know more. We know whatever it is, it's coming. I mean, I hope that helps answer the question. You know, I feel good about it, and I've said that 100 times, I think, already. I'm not, you know. I think it's sustainable for a while myself.

Yep. That's, that's helpful, Rusty. Maybe just another question, just in the context of an improving demand backdrop and visibility to higher truck prices next year, when do you think we can start to see truck pricing move higher this year? Is there a gross margin opportunity ahead of the EPA transition to sell older trucks you might have in inventory, at, towards the end of the year or into early 2027?

Well, you know, when you talk about that, you think about, and trust me, we thought about what inventory is we gonna carry, right, into the first quarter of next year. Just because as long as it's built, as long as that engine stamp dates December 31 or back. We'll make those determinations.

For us, you know, I mean, as far as the back part of the year, there's still build slots. I think a lot of OEMs are protecting some of their Q4 build slots because they're trying to push them forward because you can't just go to the suppliers and say, "Okay, I need three or four months right now," you know? They need to give them a better run rate of that. I know that build rates have moved up at an OEM or two. I've been, at least I've been told that.

You know, I mean, from our perspective, you know, we're trying to make sure we're properly inventoried. You know, you gotta make sure you got a demand for it, you know, we would like to be properly inventoried going into next year. I'm still trying to sell into this year, too. Don't get me wrong. We've done a nice job, but we've still got room to sell in the back half of this year. We still have activity out there, right? We continue to have activity. When you talk about older trucks, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. If you're talking about carrying trucks into next year with these engines, we'll carry some stuff over.

I can't tell you what that'll be, but we're always carrying inventory. You know, it might ramp. We might carry a little bit more into next year. We'll just have to wait to see how the year plays out, because there's still room to build them, right? You know, I, and I hope that answers your question.

Yep. No. That's helpful. Maybe if I could squeeze one last question in.

Sure. No problem. Hey, I'm coming back to your conference for the first time in a while.

We're looking forward to it, Rusty. On SG&A expense, it only increased 2% sequentially in the first quarter. That's a lot better than historical trends in 1Q. Can you maybe talk about the measures you're taking to kind of drive this cost management?

Yeah. Well, a lot like our customers, I knew Q1 was gonna be a trough. This is a credit to the entire organization, you know, from my management staff down to every technician and everyone in the organization. It doesn't matter what you do. It was tough, right? We had to squeeze down, and we did. You know, I, you know, and it was, you know, and it had to be contributed by a lot of folks. Those are never easy steps to make, right? Because normally, you're right. I mean, we were down year-over-year, what, two and a half, I think.

See, I'm looking at just G&A. Remember, I know you haven't followed us for long, but I separate S over here because S is always just a derivative from, you know, truck sales, right? That's the commission piece off of truck sales. The G&A piece is what we were focused. G&A by itself was off 2.5% in spite of inflation, in spite of normal raises last year, in spite of everything else. That took contributions by everybody.

You know, as a business, you know, we're gonna try to maintain that discipline. That's always the hardest part, right, is maintaining it if you get into a growing environment. We're not in a growing environment yet, but I talk about it all day. I can see it coming. Okay. We got to get that parts and service business back because that's really what I drive it off of, not so much truck sales. Truck sales are truck sales. That G&A is driven by what we do in the parts and service business.

I appreciate from everyone's efforts and giving in that first quarter and what we had to do. Made it tougher. We had to do cutbacks. You know, we did them. We executed, and we've done it before. It's just part of being in a somewhat cyclical business. Sometimes you have to make those tough decisions, right, and squeeze it back. Hopefully, our parts and service will continue to go up. You know, we'd love that. We'd love to be able to, you know, hire back some stuff again, and that parts and service business continues to go up. We want to keep the gross we get, mind you, but it takes. There's a cost to doing it, right?

We always tell everybody, you know, we're trying to keep at least, you know, 40%, 50% of every gross profit dollar of parts and service, but it takes people to make it happen. When that starts to grow, we'll be able to maybe add some folks to help us. You know, it's a chicken and egg thing. It was a great job by our team to do that. It wasn't me or anything that I did. It was just an overall effort throughout the organization, realizing how tough the quarter was going to be going into it. I'm just extremely proud of the entire organization and their execution. I look forward to hopefully a little more breathing room as we go downstream, you know, having to be quite so hard and tight on everybody.

Super helpful. I'll turn it back. Thanks, Rusty.

Yeah. Look forward to seeing you folks in a couple of weeks.

Rush Enterprises (RUSHB) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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