Sales of Class 7 and Class 8 heavy trucks continued to fall in May, repeating their monthly drops from 2000's levels.

May sales of Class 7 and 8 trucks totaled 23,400 units, off by 29% from May 2000 sales of 33,000 units. The May sales results were up from April, however, which saw only 20,600 units sold.

103,000 Class 7 and 8 trucks have been sold so far in 2001. In 2000, that number was over 155,000 units.

Class 8 sales continue to be hardest-hit, lengthening their streak of year-on-year sales drops. Now with 13 consecutive year-on-year declines, Class 8 trucks sold only 13,800 units in May, compared to 21,000 in May 2000.

Western Star, a Freightliner division, was the worst Class 8 performer, selling only 150 trucks, less than half of their May 2000 sales.

Freightliner, a division of DaimlerChrysler AG, sold only 4,000 Class 8 units in May, down from 6,000 in May 2000.

Freightliner President James Hebe was fired in late May and replaced by Rainer Schmueckle, who had at one time been Freightliner's CFO. Many in the industry blame Hebe and Freightliner for much of the current condition of the heavy truck market in the U.S. Under DaimlerChrysler, Hebe took Freightliner on a course to market share domination, offering pricing and terms which took a huge toll on current and future profitability.

Many in the industry also blame Mr. Hebe and Freightliner for engineering generous sales and return terms which, "guaranteed those big trucks would start flooding the used market in 2000 and 2001 like this industry's never seen before," according to one analyst. Indeed, Freightliner is now sitting on a used truck inventory estimates put at anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 units, with units coming in far faster than they can be sold. In addition, the terms under which the trucks were sold and returned has meant DaimlerChrysler now faces at least a $15,000 loss on every one of those trucks on top of an extremely high repossession rate.

In March, Mr. Hebe addressed a trade show, saying, "It's been easy for many to blame Freightliner for the structural change in the used truck business, when in fact it's we who have done more than anyone to hold it up." Mr. Hebe was fired a few weeks later. "Maybe it was a mutual thing," he said.