Labor Day signals yearend stretch for equipment dealers

Labor Day signals a long weekend and the end of summer for most Americans, including equipment dealers, but it also begins the end of the sales year. 

With many dealers preparing for the 2025 model year, Labor Day is the turning point from summer to the busier year-end sales cycle, John Boy, finance and sales administration manager at Anderson Equipment Co., told Equipment Finance News. 

“Labor Day and back-to-school typically launches us into the home stretch for the sales year,” he said. “We see an increase in activity each year coming out of the summer months beginning in September.” 

While Labor Day launches dealers “into the home stretch,” the last few days ahead of the holiday have little to no impact, aside from a long weekend, providing a slow end to the sales month, Sean Walsh, vice president of finance at Baltimore-based Peterbilt truck retailer The Pete Store, told EFN. 

“End of month will begin a little earlier on our side as we assume customers will opt for an extra-long weekend,” he said. “We anticipate losing Friday as a day to sell trucks.”

Model year 2025 begins 

Equipment manufacturers Komatsu and Takeuchi begin their 2025 model year in September, Boy said.  

“The typical activity increase coincides with the increase in purchasing for the new model year release,” he said. 

Meanwhile, truck dealers such as McCandless Truck Centers, Premier Truck Group and The Pete Store began advertising 2025 units for International, Freightliner and Peterbilt trucks respectively, according to their company websites. 

With the allocation model for dealers becoming more structured, dealers can plan better for 2025 and beyond, as new units begin hitting lots, Ron Long, president and chief executive at Dallas-based Premier Truck Group, said during the ACT Research seminar in Columbus, Ind., last week, 

“We’re in the process of getting our volume capabilities and our pricing for new trucks for calendar year 2025 now, and then there’s been a newfound discipline in the industry to where we expect that we’ll be talking about calendar year 2026 a year from now,” he said. “Now, with the way the volumes are allocated and committed throughout the year, there’s much less time sensitivity to pull everything together in this 10-week deal season.” 

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