Reefer Trailer Fleet Is the Oldest on Record as New Builds Run Years Behind

Net orders for the September 2025 through July 2026 order season ran 5% above the prior season, and year-to-date orders were up 25% year over year. FTR senior analyst Dan Moyer called that "meaningful improvement, but not yet enough to indicate a broad fleet-expansion cycle." Wabash's backlog reached $956 million, up 14% sequentially, and chief commercial officer Drew Schwartzhoff noted it grew in a quarter when backlog normally declines. Utility Trailer president Steve Bennett said some of his best customers have not bought in three years.

Tractors are ahead of trailers in the queue. ACT put the Class 8 backlog at 147,100 units in July against 69,500 a year earlier, a 112% jump driven by pre-buying ahead of the 2027 NOx standards. The trailer backlog rose 13%, to 78,400.

Prices moved while fleets were out of the market. Bennett said year-over-year cost increases on some reefer configurations have topped $10,000, with tariffs on steel, copper and aluminum a driver, and new antidumping duties on imported van trailers adding caution.

So the trailers most in need of replacement are the ones hardest and most expensive to replace. A 2012-to-2015 reefer that would have been traded two years ago is one you keep running another two or three seasons, on parts, not capital.

Landstar is the clearest public example. The carrier is taking delivery of 2,000 new dry vans through the rest of 2026, out of $104 million budgeted for equipment replacement, and it said why in plain numbers: trailer maintenance added $2.8 million to operating costs in 2025, and trailer maintenance and rental added $3.2 million more in the second quarter of 2026 alone. Landstar closed 2025 with roughly 13,800 company trailers plus 600 rented units.

A 40-trailer fleet sees the same curve without the capital to escape it.

Budget for the parts you will consume, not the trailer you are not buying. On reefers past 10 years the spend concentrates in the refrigeration unit — belts, compressor and clutch components, condenser and evaporator coils, defrost and temperature sensors — and in the running gear every aging van shares: brake shoes and drums, S-cams and slack adjusters, ABS modulator valves, air springs and shocks, gladhands and air hose assemblies, landing gear, kingpins and upper coupler hardware, door seals and LED lamps.

Two practical notes for that vintage. Supersession is the first: an OEM number stamped on a 2013 trailer has often been replaced two or three times since, so run the number through a free interchange lookup before you release the PO. The second is deciding repair versus replace on evidence — when a reefer cycles short or an axle wears one side, work the symptom back to the failure mode before you swap assemblies. And price steel-, copper- and aluminum-content parts with the duty pass-through in them; the tariffs that added $10,000 to a new reefer are in the replacement parts too.