Navistar Turnaround: What a Difference a Year Makes

Jack Allen Navistar’s new president, North American Trucks and Parts at this year’s Mid-America Trucking Show.

LOUISVILLE — The lights went down and music began to thump from speakers — a bass line that got you right in the heart — then the lights flashed around before revealing a stage with a giant screen as the backdrop. Navistar was putting on a show. Lights. Music. Excitement.

That was last year at the Mid-America Trucking Show (MATS) — before the OEM hit a wall with EPA certification. Then there were major shake-ups at the executive level.

Since then, they’ve partnered with Cummins and began regrouping.

“We’re placing quality at the forefront of everything we do,” said Jack Allen Navistar president, North American Trucks and Parts at this year’s Mid-America Trucking Show. No thumping music, no Madonna-esque light show, no 80-ft. screen.

“We made commitments and did what we said we were going to do.”

Make no mistake, Navistar was in rough shape last summer — at least optically.

But they’ve turned it around.

For starters, Navistar president and CEO Troy Clarke told the crowd at MATS, “when it came to our first-quarter earnings the market responded beyond our expectations, boosting share price over 25 percent since the [last summer’s] announcement.”

Further, the first 300 International ProStar+ Class 8s equipped with the Cummins ISX15 starting shipping out to customers last December, ahead of the initial deadline.

Those commitments, Allen noted, couldn’t have been met without their partners.

“We’ve got a great turnaround story,” Allen acknowledged, “but we know we have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

This is a different, more focused Navistar than last year. One that, as Allen phrased it Wednesday, “is all about deeds, not words.”