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This story appears in the June 2 print edition of Transport Topics.

The U.S. heavy-duty truck fleet grew to its largest size on record during the first quarter and is likely to grow further in the coming quarters, IHS Automotive reported.

The total number of registered Class 8 vehicles in operation climbed to 3.66 million, up 3.2% from 3.55 million in the first quarter of 2013, according to the firm’s Polk division commercial vehicle report.

The report also said first-time registrations increased 9.2% to 48,094 new trucks during the quarter, up from 44,046 during the first three months of 2013.

While the most recent quarter’s year-over-year growth rate was the strongest since a 4.8% rise in the 2007 first quarter, Gary Meteer, Sr. director of global commercial vehicle products at IHS, was a still a bit cautious about the current market.

“It continues to creep up,” Meteer said of the Class 8 vehicle population, but “we’re kind of just bumping along. The economy is good, but it’s nothing to write home about.”

He noted that new registrations in the most recent quarter were down 1.1% compared with the same quarter in 2012.

He also said the total vehicle count may be inflated due to the timing of replacement purchases. Trade-in vehicles continue to appear in the truck population for a certain amount of time as used-truck sellers try to move them.

Sequentially, the Class 8 fleet has expanded for seven straight quarters, now topping the previous record of 3.65 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Meteer characterized the current environment as a replacement market rather than a growth market and also suggested registrations were lighter than expected, given the growth in new truck orders during the past several months.

Nevertheless, he said he was “very optimistic that we’re eventually going to see the registrations follow the order flow.”

“There has to come a time when those orders turn into sales and start getting registered,” he said.

“We’re hoping that happens here in the near future, so we’ll see the market be all that it can be in the 2014 calendar year.”

Meteer’s outlook was shared by Thom Albrecht, an analyst at BB&T Capital Markets, who said the freight sector “remains busy,” and has returned to normal after a tough winter.

“Carriers are experiencing year-over-year volume increases and rate improvements, but in our opinion 2014 is not the tipping point carriers believed it was in February and March,” Albrecht said in a note on May 27.

“The creeping regulatory burden and the deteriorating driver situation all point to gradual capacity tightening in 2015 and 2016, but this year will have some occasional fits and starts,” he said.

One large carrier that has made a major investment in new equipment is Con-way Truckload, which said last week it is purchasing 550 new power units to replace vehicles in its 2,700-tractor fleet.

President Joe Dagnese told Transport Topics the company replaces about 20% to 25% of its fleet every year to maintain an average age of about two years.

He said the company also has added some extra capacity through owner-operators and that any fleet expansion across the industry may be a response to declining productivity under the new hours-of-service rules. He said the HOS changes caused roughly a 5% productivity hit.

“If people are expanding out there, it’s probably just to get back to water level, but that’s all tempered by driver availability,” Dagnese said.

Meteer said the large fleets are doing well. “They’re making good money, maybe getting some increases in rates, but they’re very cautious about how they’re adding equipment at the present time,” he said.

Polk’s report also found that small carriers represent a growing portion of the heavy-duty truck market.

New registrations among carriers with five or fewer vehicles spiked 45.2% from a year earlier, while registrations rose 8% at fleets operating more than 500 trucks, compared with 9.2% growth for the entire market.

Class 8 registrations increased 7% year-over-year for fleets with 101-500 trucks, but dipped about 1.6% for those with six to 100 units.