Rush Enterprises Q1 2026 Earnings Call: Complete Transcript

Rush Enterprises (NASDAQ:RUSHB) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call. Benzinga APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ to learn more. Access the full call at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/rc4sc8fa/ Summary Rush Enterprises Inc reported first quarter 2026 revenues of $1.68 billion, with net income of $61.5 million or $0.77 per diluted share. The company declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.19 per share, emphasizing its commitment to returning value to shareholders. Despite a challenging commercial vehicle market, the company expects the first quarter to be the trough and anticipates improvement driven by increased order activity and customer optimism. Aftermarket services, leasing, and rental businesses remained strong and contributed significantly to profitability, with the aftermarket business accounting for 66% of gross profit. Strategic initiatives included signing an agreement to acquire Peterborough dealerships in Louisiana and Mississippi, expected to close in June. Management highlighted the importance of emissions regulations and the anticipated impact on future truck sales, with a focus on maintaining inventory levels and managing costs effectively. The company expects gradual improvement in truck sales and aftermarket performance, supported by improving freight conditions and customer sentiment. Full Transcript OPERATOR Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Rush Enterprises Inc's 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised to withdraw your question. Please press star 11 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. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) 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, Chief Operating Officer, Jay Hazelwood, Vice President 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. Steve Keller (Chief Financial Officer) 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 risks 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 or those discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 and in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Thank you Steve and thanks everyone for joining us today. As we reported yesterday, we generated revenues of $1.68 billion in the first quarter with net income of $61.5 million or 77 cents 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 and 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. So 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 some segments, excuse me, especially for some of our over the road customers. But overall we were able to deliver growth, which speaks to the strength of our relationships and our execution. We also started seeing to starting 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 truck sales at their lowest level since COVID But even in that environment, we performed well. We sold 2,964 Class 8 trucks in the US 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 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 until later in the year, so we expect that to benefit benefit us in the coming quarter. Used truck demand improved as we move through the quarter and we're seeing better conditions tied to improving spot rates and tighter capacity. So overall, while the first quarter was slow, we expect sales to improve gradually in the second quarter and then pick up in the second Pick up more in the second half of the year. Renewal leasing continue to be strong and 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 the 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. So 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. OPERATOR 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 and A roster, our first question for the day will be coming from the line of avi. Audrey Lashwin of ubs. Your line is open. Audrey Lashwin (Equity Analyst at UBS) Hey, good morning, guys. So glad to see that the year is still on track for improvement sequentially. But, you know, just thinking about the second half year, it sounds like there's still a decent amount of uncertainty around the pre buy for this year on just a number of fronts. Whether the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) are going to have new engines ready and how the rules are going to be enforced and the demand dynamics around that. Can you just give us a rundown on how those different moving parts are shaping your expectations?? Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Well, that's a good statement there, avi. It's kind of crazy, isn't it? We're. What are we? We're April 30 tomorrow. We got eight months left in the year and we still don't have definitive regulations printed. Okay, now, 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 going to keep supposedly at 0.35, but they have not clarified about credits, et cetera. If there's going to be NCPs (Noncompliance Penalties), things like that, we're probably still 60 days away from it. But regardless of that, we do know that there are going to be new emissions regulations, you know, so 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 order intake. So 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. So you know, we'll still have to follow that and see. We hope to know within the next 45 to 60 days. But if I had been, if I told you that 45 days ago and held my breath, I wouldn't be in very good shape because I told you I'd known by now. So it keeps getting, the candy is keep getting kicked down the road a little bit. So 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 trucks out, whether it was through non domicile 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 so the supply side squeezed down. Customers are more optimistic about rates coming in. If you'd asked me three or four months ago, everybody said, I know this is one of your questions, but you know me, I'm going to ramble on that, you know, we're going to be flat to low singles and it was mid singles and now people look at maybe high single digit increases. So people are optimistic at the same time to your point about emissions not knowing clear, not knowing clearly what it's going to be, what the state is. But we do know it's going to be worse whether there would be NCPs (Noncompliance Penalties) and the cost would go up dramatically or the total enforcement of what's out there for EPA. January 27th. So 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. Audrey Lashwin (Equity Analyst at UBS) Appreciate that Rusty. And just to follow on a point there. So 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. So what are you seeing there and when do you think we might see parts and service volumes inflect positively? Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Yep. You know, it's funny, people, theoretically, you know, people believe that when truck sales go down,, okay, that you're going to get more parts than 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. We've even in spite of inflation, we've had, we've remained flat. And that's because people have tightened their belts. The best thing I can see is for their business to get better. Right. Historically, when customers feel better about looking forward and more optimistic, there will be no postponement of any maintenance or repairs because it's just like anything, you know, 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 managing your household. So that's what customers have done. The most encouraging thing for me is going to be hopefully seeing second and third quarter releases and listen and hearing about contract rates going up. So that optimistic, that optimism that we see out there, you know, comes to fruition is the best way I can describe it. We expect, I would tell you this, we've been going slightly, I'm not happy with it, but we have gradually gone January. February was better than January, March was better than February, and April looks like it's going to be a little bit better than March. So I think as conditions improve, not just truck sales, but obviously parts and service too will improve with that. And that's. 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. But 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 now people are gone. 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, but 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. But so I mean, I just do believe that things are going to Be better. I don't want people to get. I believe, I believe we're going to be up in some areas. It's going to, it's going to build through the year and because we're on it and I believe it's not going to go away. At 27. My personal belief is I see a nice, a pretty good four month run anyway. I'm not going to try to forecast outside of a year, but I feel pretty good about where it is. But it's just going to be a gradual. I just believe it's going to continue to get better based upon conversations I have with many customers and people around the industry. All right, appreciate that perspective. Thank you, Rusty. OPERATOR Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question is going to be coming from the line of Bradley Luertz Stevens. Your line is open. Bradley Luertz Great, thanks. Morning, Rusty. Thanks for, 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 your heavy duty and your medium light duty? Just because of the weakness in the medium duty in the first quarter. Should we see a more immediate recovery in that versus Class 8? Just any clarity around breaking out those two trends would be helpful. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Yeah. Sequentially. Yes. Because it was so often Q1. Right. Sometimes you got numerator and denominator. Right. So from a percentage basis. Yeah. You're going to 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. And we robbed way off in medium and a lot of it was timing. Yeah. So sequentially medium will pick up quicker because we're starting at a lower base. Right. If you want to 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, then I, maybe medium will be closer. It'll catch back up to flat maybe for the year. So that, you know, that bodes pretty well for the next few quarters because we started such a hole on the medium duty side. But I expect heavy duty to, you know, continue to ramp up. If you want me to throw a number out, say heavy duty's up 15% in Q2. And 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 was what we've talked about mainly. You know, we do a lot of vocational business over the road. Is still the biggest market that's out there. Right. You're talking 2/3 of the market. So if that continues to get better for that customer base, you know, we will continue to increase quarter by quarter as the year goes and 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 want to get in the weeds. Usually those engines will be built maybe halfway through January of next year. And because we are the retailer and it takes anywhere from 32 days to five months, depending on the type of product it is to get there, you know, that bodes well for us all the way through next next year. And Q1. And I don't if the economy is in good shape and the business is still aligned. Look, the number that's going to come out this year probably is not going to be anything more than a normal replacement. The deal is it's going to be backloaded, right? I mean, 41,000 units was all Class 8. That was, it was Covid second quarter of 2020. I think it was second and third quarter of 2020. That's the lowest in six years. And medium was the lowest since 2015. So it wasn't just us, even though we were a little worse on the medium side. So 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. Not going to be an add water and stir thing just in Q2, but you better believe Q2 better be better than Q1. But it's not going to pre me dramatically, but it's going to build. And I believe that's the case across our whole business model. Right. I really, 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 going to sit here and feel great like that, but I feel good about the whole thing. I want to watch it continue to evolve. We're still working business, okay? We really are. We've been, we've been, we've had really, as I've said, we've had nice order intake with the majority of it going to start coming in. In Q2 I said maybe up 15% on Class 8 and maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but somewhere in that range. This timing rolls into all these things too. But it should build from there through the rest of the year and through Q1 anyway, for sure. And 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. Bradley Luertz That 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. 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? Is that a headwind or does the emission regulation offset that? Just any thoughts around this kind of competing dynamics would be helpful. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Okay, well, you know, the first thing was supply, right. You really want the customer, you really want the environment to be better. From a demand perspective, right? You got supply and you got demand. Your point about supply? Supply has been being. 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 going to scare you how low retail was from a demand perspective. To be honest with you, it would be under 200,000 units in the U.S. okay, annualized. But that has taken the supply up. But you need a combination of both. Right. So it was nice to see that tonnage had bumped up in a couple of the months. I think it was February. I'm not mistaken. If I'm not mistaken. And even though it's not robust, you got both of those, I believe it will continue. And like I said a minute ago, even, even if we. They're talking like you have 41,000 in the U.S. and ACT says it'll be 225. Right. Well, it means it's gonna have to average 60. So that's a 50% bump. 60 a quarter. But it's not gonna be loaded like that. It'll probably be 50 in Q2 and then so 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 placement. So you know that that is a driver. But people have to. Three years freight recession, man, that was. I've never seen one like that.. Right. And 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 offered no disrespect to my customer base. But we don't. So, so I'm there to watch the suffering for the last three years. So 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. But I believe that if demand will hold. Right. I can't, I'm not an expert on the demand side. You know, there's too many, too many macro economic 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 they, most people like it. I mean, I can tell you all these little bitty antidotes that I've got that make me feel good about it. And like I said, even if we have a big ramp up and there's 60,000 average 180 plus thousand in the last three quarters, we're still only going to be it, you know, replacement cycle. So that's not a huge big rebuy that scares you going forward from my perspective, which means we should roll through 26 and there won't be this big drop in 27. 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. Bradley Luertz Yeah, no, I think, I think you did and I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) We're in good shape. The supply thing is really good because non-domicile drivers crack that. It was a numerous, it was a bunch of different, you know, antidotes that have helped try to line that up and get it in line and now it's time not. And just because we're going to have a little pre-buy, I don't want. 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. Bradley Luertz Okay, thanks so much for the time this morning, Rusty. I'll pass it along. You bet. Thank you. OPERATOR Thank you. One moment for the next question. And the next questions will be coming from the line of Andrew Obin of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Hey, good morning, Rusty, how are you? Good morning, Steve. Mr. Obin, how are you today? I'm doing well. Andrew Obin (Equity Analyst) Maybe we can talk a little bit about you sort of talked about parts and services, clearly a focus for the OEM yesterday as well. 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? And what levers do you have to keep outgrowing the industry? Thank you. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Yeah. I would tell you the first quarter, you know, we were probably close to in line. Everything is 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. But we can get through our manufacturers. And probably the hardest hit piece was service. Service was back for us in Q1 and that's why maybe our margin mix was down a little bit because it comes into a mix. As you know, your margin is much higher on service than parts. But, you know, I was nervous. What are we doing wrong? Right. But not that it makes you. I don't want to ride in the same boat with everybody else, so don't ever fix that. But at least I do know that across 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 to 4. 4%. It was off 4% across a group of. group of approximately 200 dealers. How about that? I have that information. So I. Doesn't make me feel any better. We roll a little less than that. So. But it still was interesting that the spend, customer spend was off in Q1. And it's just the ending of what I said. Tightening your belt. Right. People have just tightened their belt the last couple 3/4 when you asked about the initiative. Yeah. Our initiatives are still there for sure now. We grew our national account business. Okay. But at the same time, that was on the part 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 or interval 5,000 miles or something. As I said earlier, when things are tight, that's what people do. And that's why when their business gets better, people get back into ignore normalized, you know, site part of the cycle. What they do normally. Right. They're not squeezing it here and there. So 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 well. The numbers I pulled from some other folks, but it was close. So, you know, it was just. But as people. There is Their business gets better, they'll get back to more normalized spending cycle. And, 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. So that's a good thing. Right. The, the balance between spot and contract got way back, way better. Right. Because 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 of. And it just, you know, spiraled down all the rates over the last three years. But you know, getting a better balance across that right now is allowing folks to be more optimistic. And 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 things to do. But when things are tough, you squeeze. And it's 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 parts or our service or 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 or over the road and we managed to, you know, produce decent earnings. Right. So, you know, Andrew, I expect bart's in service, although that initiative is still ongoing. As I said, it was up last year on the BART side. The service side has been my most concerning piece, to be honest with you. Barts was slightly up and it will get even better through that initiative and many other initiatives that I'm not going to talk about by the way, that we always have ongoing. You've always got to have something going, I can tell you that. So we try and maybe Rusty, you Andrew Obin (Equity Analyst) know, you have footprint across the country. You sometimes share with us what you're seeing in terms of macro. Can you just go and just a. What are you seeing in terms of macro overall and just maybe sort of go in key verticals? Right. You clearly have big off road presence. So what are we seeing in key off road verticals? And then are you seeing any impact in your oil and gas business from higher commodity prices? And clearly I think we talked of on road, but just maybe just give us an overview of what you're seeing from a macro perspective in some of your key verticals. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) 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, you know, it's not. It's flat. To be honest with you, we haven't seen that. You know, our national accounts were pretty flat in Q1 now. They were up last year. And we're not catch. Keeping up with, should I say, with. With our plan. Our plan was already in the first quarter. It's been. There's not one huge terrible area, Andrew, I expect in our. We still suffer on our unmanaged accounts. That would probably be the one thing, if you remember what I told you about unmanaged accounts before, that's the small customer, which still makes up 30% or so of our business. And 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 first quarter of this year. So. 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 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, but we haven't seen that big a bump from oil and gas yet. Right. We do expect to possibly see something, but we. It has not come to fruition yet. You know, I don't want to go through all the regions, but probably, you know, but you know, Texas is always, you know, one of the strongest areas we have along with Florida. And 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. But 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, 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 a consistent, solid growth and taking share. Just taking share is what it's about. And 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. So we're focused on continuing to do what we've done in the past. We've got some other initiatives we're rolling out. And, 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 a better environment, as I continue to say, without any interruption from something outside the industry itself. Andrew Obin (Equity Analyst) Thank you, Rusty. OPERATOR Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. One moment for the next question. And our next question will be coming from the line of Cole Cousins of Wolf Research. Please go ahead. Cole Cousins (Equity Analyst) 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? Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) 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 7 to 8, 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 in peg,, 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 continue solid order intake. Now, is that 30,000amonth or something? Right now, I consider that a pretty good month myself. So I, you know, I don't know from our perspective, I can only speak about, from, you know, I can 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, you know, a competitive drop, you know, drop-back. And 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 now. Our manufacturers understand from their own personal perspective what they are. And so I, I believe we're going to see continued. I can't sit here and tell you it's going to stay over 35,000amonth, this, that, the other. But if it continues at 25 to 30,000, we didn't have a month like that for like seven in a row. And we continued that. So we started from a low base as far as backlog but 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. And I think once we continue to get more clarity around emissions and customers, businesses. Look we, we didn't deliver many trucks last three quarters, right. So you know people, I know some customers that got off a trade cycle last year, right. That did not buy as much, right. What was last year? 200 US was 216 or something like that. Well that's, that's under by 20 some odd thousand what replacement is. And it's continued to be under replacement into Q1. And so even without all the outside activity, you know, people have to get back replacing trucks. You know, it's funny that you think about it probably. I know people thought am I even going to be in business? Because that's where you're freight procession. All of a sudden you wake up, you're getting more optimistic because you think you're going to get better brakes. They're not going backwards, it's the trough are coming back up, you see the spot environment, you go, I am going to 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 through the roof. So I, I believe there's some natural sustainability to it and you add in the emissions and other stuff that's coming forward on January 1st and I, I just believe it's going to continue to be good. I don't, you know, I don't know. I don't think there's going to be this huge pre buy as I said earlier. But there you would consider the pre buy based upon what the first quarter was, how, how bad the first quarter retail was and how well really Q4, how bad Q4 was, right. So you have to get somewhat back in line. And the good part is I don't think it's going to just be crazy, right. I think it's just going to be solid continued order growth because people's business is getting customers, businesses are getting better. And then the other outside influence of the emissions which we like I said we'll hopefully know more but we know whatever it is, it's coming. So I mean I hope that helps answer the question that you know, I feel good about it and I've said that a hundred times, I think already I'm not, you know and I think it's sustainable for a while myself. Cole Cousins (Equity Analyst) That's helpful Rusty and Maybe just another question, just in the context of 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? And is there a gross margin opportunity ahead of the EPA transition to sell older trucks? You might have an inventory towards the end of the year or into early 2027? Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Well, you know, when you talk about that, you think about, trust me, we thought about what inventory is we going to carry right into the first quarter of next year, just because as long as it's built, that engine snap dates December 31st or back. So. And we'll make those determinations for ourselves. You know, I mean, as far as the back part of the year, there's still build slots. So 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, I know that bill rates have moved up an OEM or two. I've been at least, I've been told that. So, you know, I mean, from our perspective, you know, we're trying to make sure we're properly inventory. You know, you got to make sure they got a demand for it. But, you know, we would like to be properly inventory going into next year. But 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. But 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. You mean if you're talking about carrying trucks into next year with these engines, we'll carry some stuff over. It won't be. I can't tell you what that'll be, but we're always carrying inventory, so, you know, it might ramp. We might carry a little bit more into next year. We'll just have to wait to see and see how the year plays out because there's still room to build them. Right. So, you know, I hope that answers your question. Yep. Cole Cousins (Equity Analyst) No, that's helpful. And maybe if I could squeeze one last question. Sure, go for it. Hey, I'm coming back to your conference for the first time in a while. We're looking forward to it, rusty, but on SGA 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? Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Yeah, well, a lot like our customers, I knew Q1 was going to be a trough. And 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. and it was, you know, had to be contributed by a lot of folks. And 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. And what. See, I'm looking at just G and 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 GNA piece is what we were focused. And GNA by itself was off two and a half percent in spite of inflation, in spite of normal raises last year, in spite of everything else. But that's a contribution by everybody, you know, as business, you know, we're going to try to maintain that discipline. That's always the hardest part, right, Is maintaining. 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 and truck sales. That GNA is driven by what we do in the parts and service business. So 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 some cutbacks, but, you know, we did them, we executed and we've done it before. And it's just part of being in somewhat cyclical business. Sometimes you have to make those tough decisions, right, and squeeze it back. So hopefully our parts and service will continue to go up. And, you know, we'd love that. We'd love to be able to, you know, hire back some stuff again. And if that parts and service business continues to go up, we want to keep the grossly hit, 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. So 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, but 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. So I'm just extremely proud of the entire organization and their execution. And I look forward to hopefully a little more breathing room as we go downstream, you know, without having to be quite so hard and tight. Super helpful. I'll turn it back. Thanks, Rusty. Yeah, look forward to seeing you folks in a couple, three weeks. You too. OPERATOR Thank you. That does conclude today's Q and A session. I would like to turn the call back over to Rusty for closing remarks. Go ahead, please. Rusty Rush (Chairman, CEO and President) Yes. Well, I just want to appreciate everybody joining us this morning and we will look forward to speaking to everybody in July and we'll discuss Q2 to see if everything still, the outlook is the same. I'm banking on it. See you. Thank you. Bye-bye. 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