Axle and Engine Shortages Cut Daimler's Q3 Truck Build; Some Units Slip Into Q1

On the Nov. 6 earnings call, CEO Karin Rådström said suppliers had been asked in the spring to hire, buy raw material and add shifts ahead of the ramp, and that some could not do it at the scale required after an unusually weak start to the year. The trouble, she said, is concentrated on trucks whose buyers did not spec a Detroit powertrain. A Cummins spokesperson told Transport Topics the issue was "component constraints, particularly in axles."

CFO Eva Scherer put third-quarter expedited freight in the low-to-mid double-digit millions of dollars and said she "still expect[s] a high impact from expedited freight in the fourth quarter." Rådström expects some units to shift out of the fourth quarter into the first, with production recovering in early 2027. Daimler left its full-year Trucks North America guidance at 160,000 to 180,000 units and a 9% to 11% adjusted return on sales.

The engine end of the same pipe is running flat out. Cummins sold 24,000 heavy-duty truck engines in the third quarter, up 68% year over year, and said on its Nov. 5 call that the Jamestown, N.Y., plant building the X15 is expected to run at capacity in the fourth quarter. Limited production of the updated X10 and X15 starts in January.

Regulation is stacked on top of that. Cummins expects EPA to issue the final heavy-duty NOx rule only in December, days before its Jan. 1 effective date, and has cut its 2026 North American medium-duty forecast to 125,000–130,000 units on that uncertainty while holding heavy-duty at 240,000–250,000. A supplier running at capacity, heading into a product changeover, under a rule it has not yet read, has nothing spare for a service-parts surge.

If you have a Cascadia or Western Star on order with a Cummins engine and a non-Detroit drive axle, get the build week confirmed this week rather than next. Daimler expects units to move into the first quarter, and the specs it described are exactly that combination.

For the trucks already working, the real exposure is service parts out of the same constrained suppliers: carrier assemblies, differentials, axle shafts, yokes and driveline hardware on non-Detroit axles. When the dealer quotes weeks on one of those numbers, an equivalent aftermarket part often ships the same week, so it is worth running the interchange on the part number before you accept the lead time. On a mixed fleet, confirm the model year actually shares the component before you pull it — the model specs and parts fitment for Freightliner and Western Star will tell you whether the axle under the 2022 tractor is the one under the 2025.

Then budget for the bill. Expedited freight is sitting in Daimler's income statement this quarter, and that kind of cost rarely stays with the OEM.