Oshkosh Corporation
Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 29 Jul 2021

[Operator:]

Greetings and welcome to the Oshkosh Corporation Fiscal Year 2021 Third Quarter Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Pat Davidson, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for Oshkosh Corporation. Thank you, Mr. Davidson. You may begin.

[Patrick Davidson:]

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. Earlier today, we published our third quarter 2021 results. A copy of the release is available on our website at oshkoshcorp.com. Today's call is being webcast and is accompanied by a slide presentation which includes a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures that we will use during this call and is also available on our website. The audio replay and slide presentation will be available on our website for approximately 12 months.

[John Pfeifer:]

Thank you, Pat. And good morning, everyone. I'm proud to share that Oshkosh has delivered another quarter of strong performance, experiencing strong orders, sales growth, and robust backlogs across all of our segments. Our third - our strong third quarter results include sales of $2.2 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $2.09, an increase of more than 60% over prior year adjusted EPS. We are pleased with this strong performance and I'm proud of our team's perseverance to deliver growth and solid results in the face of one of the most challenging global supply chain environments in recent memory. Our third quarter was highlighted by several exciting announcements on the heels of the USPS next-generation delivery vehicle, or NGDV win in the second quarter. In early June, we were notified that we won the U.S. Army's Stryker Medium Caliber Weapons System, or MCWS program, which represents an important new adjacency for our Defense business. Less than a week later, we held a joint news conference with the city of Madison, Wisconsin to announce our revolutionary new electric fire truck, the Pierce Volterra. Madison is the first city in North America to be operating an electric fire truck as part of its fleet and we're pleased to report that the truck has been performing extremely well. This is a big step forward for our EVs and is another milestone in our two-decade-plus history of electrifying products. As we've been discussing over the past year, we have significant electrification projects in all of our business segments.

[Michael Pack:]

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 8. We delivered strong third quarter results despite significant supply chain disruptions which impacted our ability to complete and deliver units. Consolidated revenues were approximately $100 million lower than our prior expectations as a result of these disruptions largely at Access Equipment. Consolidated sales for the third quarter were $2.2 billion or $628 million higher than the prior year, representing a 40% increase. The sales increase was driven by an 89% increase at Access Equipment, a 27% increase at Defense, and a 12% increase at Commercial. Access Equipment sales increased due to improved market demand as we exit the pandemic driven by strong replacement demand. Last year demand was negatively impacted as COVID-19 shelter in place restrictions peaked around much of the globe in our third quarter. Defense sales increased in the quarter due to higher JLTV volume and the benefit of Pratt Miller sales, which we acquired in the second quarter of this year. Fire & Emergency sales were approximately flat in the quarter and Commercial segment sales were up due to increased RCV demand as we emerged from the pandemic, offset in part by the lack of concrete batch sales. As a reminder the concrete batch plant business was divested in the fourth quarter of the prior year.

[John Pfeifer:]

We announced another solid quarter and our outlook for the remainder of the year continues to be positive. We've made adjustments to our expectations as we work through supply chain challenges. Importantly, we believe the supply chain challenges will subside over time. We won some big programs recently and we're taking actions to drive profitable growth as we innovate, serve, and advance the company. Our long-term outlook is strong as we leverage technology and innovation to generate industry-leading performance and further distance ourselves from the competition. I hope you will attend our Investor Day in September. We have a full agenda that will provide an excellent overview of our company, a chance to speak with our leadership team, and experience our industry-leading, innovative products firsthand. While portions of the meeting will be live streamed, you will need to be here in person to get the full experience. We hope to see you there. Please reach out to Pat if you have any questions I'll turn it back over to Pat to get the Q&A started.

[Patrick Davidson:]

Thanks, John. I'd like to remind everybody please limit your questions to one plus a follow-up. And we need to be disciplined on that follow-up question. After the follow-up, we ask you to get back in queue if you'd like - to ask any additional questions. Operator, please begin the question-and-answer period of this call.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our first question comes from Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

[Stephen Volkmann:]

Thanks for taking the question. The question is really on sort of price versus cost, and I think you talked about $35 million of headwind for material and freight in the fourth quarter. I assume that's net of any price increases you're putting through, but if you could just kind of describe what's happening with price and when and if that kind of normalizes and maybe even gets better in 2022? Whatever commentary you could have around that, I'd appreciate?

[Michael Pack:]

Sure Steve, this is Mike, I can take that. Yes so, really from a price cost perspective, what we're seeing for next quarter, the $35 million that references is in line with what our expectations were last quarter when we said about $45 million that we did see about 10 to 12 in the third quarter we just wrapped up. We do expect that we'll continue to have some cost price headwinds in our first quarter of next year, but by the time we get to the January quarter or second quarter, that will start moderating. Certainly, since the last call, we have continued to see commodity escalation, in some cases we've taken further pricing action during the past quarter. So, we're going to continue to manage it in a disciplined manner, but, again, by the time we get to the second quarter, we should start seeing moderation to get back to - an equilibrium there. And again, if you go back to 2018 when we saw the steel escalation, we did see a benefit on the back end of that. So, we don't have reason to believe we wouldn't see something similar in this go-around.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

[Nicole DeBlase:]

Can we talk a little bit about what's going on with the supply chain, and I guess, did you actually have to shut down production as a result at all in the third quarter? And then when we think about fourth quarter and access, is the anticipation, are you guys anticipating shutting down production at certain points during the quarter there?

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes thanks, Nicole. The supply chain was definitely the headline for us this quarter. As the markets have rebounded really sharply, the supply chain has had a tough time catching up. And when we talk about supply chain disruption, we're talking about it beyond just, say, the chip challenge. Suppliers are really facing challenges and hiring employees across industries. Shipping itself has been a major challenge. We have global supply chains, so there's a lot of freight imbalance that's added two weeks, sometimes up to four weeks of lead time just in freight from Asia or Europe that's caused problems. So we've had a lot of, I'll call it disruptions, slowdown in manufacturing. A couple of times where we've had to stop lines for temporary periods of time, and that has had a bigger impact at the Access Equipment segment where we have a lot of high-volume manufacturing than the other segments. But it's a challenge across our entire business. We expect that this will subside. We don't think this is going to last for a long period of time. We believe we're in it for another couple of quarters, and as we get into 2022, we believe we will start to see much more normalization as the suppliers have caught up with this quick recovery that we've all been struggling to keep up with.

[Nicole DeBlase:]

Understood thanks. And maybe for my follow-up, just on the free cash flow guidance increase, is that all working capital driven just curious since earnings at the top end have come down a bit?

[Michael Pack:]

Yes, it indeed is free cash flow, some customer advances, and modestly lower inventory levels.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Chad Dillard with Bernstein. Please proceed with your question.

[Chad Dillard:]

So can you talk a little bit about your conversations with rental companies? At least as it pertains to 2022, are they happening earlier? Any color you can give on just initial thoughts on how you're thinking about pricing.

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes, so it's John. I'll kind of give you maybe an overview of the access customer environment and demand environment also I'll try to answer your question about 2022. So, needless to say, the current environment is really, really strong. And that's - you see that in our backlog $1.75 billion in backlog. And when I talked to Nicole's question about the supply chain, hey, we're not losing business. We've got lots of, orders are strong, our backlog is good, this is all business that we'll continue to - our orders that we'll continue to fulfill. Right now, when you look at the rental market, we believe that the demand is largely driven by replacement demand. We've got - we've been talking for several quarters about how fleets are aged and our customers now, they're more confident in the recovery, they're more willing to spend capital to upgrade those fleets. And that's what they're doing. Now, there's also fleet growth that's happening. They're trying to grow the fleets because they're finding new opportunities to apply the equipment. That's also, of course, very good. This leads - this all means that there is, really strong utilization rates. Even with not such great non-residential construction metrics, these demand rates have been strong. And again, it's that replacement demand that's really been fueling as we believe. But as non-residential starts to improve in the future, that's just going to continue to help our demand which is why we believe we're in a multi-year recovery period. So if you look at 2022, the one thing I'll say about it is we are having - already speaking with our customers regarding their plans and their purchases for 2022. And we know and we've always said that, hey, we've got some cost inflation in our business with material cost and some of the freight rates, and we intend to make sure that we recover that. Sometimes there's a little bit of a lag effect because we've got backlogs. But we will fully expect to stay ahead of it over time. So that's what I can tell you about it.

[Chad Dillard:]

Okay, that's helpful. And then maybe a bit longer term question on some of your new electric products versus internal combustion?

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes.

[Chad Dillard:]

Can you talk about just, you know, what the margin difference would be potentially, is there any margin difference, can you talk about just your philosophy on R&D and the level of intensity you think is appropriate?

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes.

[Chad Dillard:]

And lastly just manufacturing footprint, are you thinking about, you know, having dedicated lines or is it going to be integrated with the legacy products.

[John Pfeifer:]

The last point, it will be some of both. Some will be integrated, some will be independent lines, it really depends on the segment, it depends on the product. What I can tell you about the electrification business, hey I'll tell you in general we're an innovation company, and we innovate all the time whether it's electrification or autonomy or with data and how we use data that provides better performance of a product and better insights to our customers. When you look at electrification, I think the most important thing to understand with electrification, is electrification the fact that it provides zero emission is good, but that's not - that's only one benefit that we all get out of electrification. The other benefits that are big are - there's big total cost of ownership benefits because it's more efficient to run off of electricity than it is off of diesel or gasoline, for that matter. Number two, there is a lot of performance benefits that we provide for the product, for our customers, or productivity with electrification that you don't necessarily get with an internal combustion engine. So the answer to your question is absolutely, that leads to our ability to improve our margins because we're able to solve customer problems better. And the economics are there. So that's one of the great compelling things about electrifying a lot of our product lines. And this will go on for years, you know. We're not going to see entire end markets electrify overnight. It's going to be - it's going to take several years for the adoption by our customer base. Some will adopt faster than others. But this is a positive trend on many different levels.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Jamie Cook with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

[Jamie Cook:]

I guess just two questions, John. You know, obviously, you know, 2021's a challenging year but as you think about 2022 is there any way you could outline for us which markets you think have the opportunity, you know, for growth and if anything, if sales that were - that we couldn't get in 2021 because of the supply chain if that's sort of additive to your 2022 outlook and I guess a as longer term question I think you've done a good job sort of talking about how Oshkosh can grow sort of in adjacent markets whether it's the optional manned vehicle market or last mile delivery. Can you talk about sort of when we think Oshkosh can start like, do we start to see knows benefits in 2022 or do those - does the growth from adjacent markets, should we expect it further out? Thanks.

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes, so, you know, I think that for the most part, if you look at all of our Commercial segments, non-Defense secretaries let's call them, we expect really healthy markets in 2022. We had - and I'll give you an example. We had previously been very concerned about the municipal spending and municipal budgets and we talked about that in past quarters because, you know, usually after a recession municipal budgets get squeezed and sometimes that can have a downward pressure on fire truck demand. We are not seeing that. We are seeing municipal spending that is better than we anticipated. Where we see the market for our fire trucks to be better than maybe we thought it would be several quarters ago. So that's positive. We see multi-year growth in the access segment for a lot of factors so - that also include global and China and so forth. The Defense segment, you know, the fact call wheeled vehicle budgets are going to be under a little bit of pressure in 2022 and fuzz so there will - 2023 so there will be some pressure there but Defense is a great growth story for us because what you mentioned in the second half of your question our ability to win in adjacent programs has been validated the last six months, USPS is a big, big program for us. MCWS is a near billion dollar program for us. These are adjacencies that are much more in line with funding priorities. We were just downselected on the OMFV, that's optionally manned fighting vehicle that will replace the gigantic infantry fighting vehicle or the Bradley that's in the market. So to get downselected to participate on that's a big deal. So I'll give you some color on the timing. So on MCWS there will actually be a little bit of revenue in 2022 from MCWS and we'll get - but the material revenue will come from 2023. And that will last about 6-ish years for that program to run. And on postal, we go into production in postal in the second half of 2023. So we'll see some revenue in 2023, we'll see material revenue in 2024 and up to full rate revenue in 2025 and that's a long-term program and a big program. So that's a little bit of color I can provide you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Mig Dobre with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

[Mig Dobre:]

Mike, maybe this question for you. I'm sort of trying to understand the moving pieces through your updated outlook here on the cost side. I do remember you spelling out for us the raw material headwind in terms of a dollar headwind that you had in fiscal 2021 as well as the cost reversal, the temporary cost reversal. So can we get an update as to how you were thinking about these figures, again, in your updated fiscal 2021 outlook, and then how much, in terms of dollars, all these supply chain issues are dragging your full-year outlook.

[Michael Pack:]

So Mig, I think first of all, really the cost price is fairly similar to what we expected this past quarter so we talked about the 45 million in the back half of the year. We had about 10-ish million in the third quarter. Rises to about $35 million in the fourth quarter. The other obvious headwind year-over-year was those temporary costs reversing was about $60 million and a lot of those came back this past quarter in the third quarter and it was about $30 million in the fourth quarter. So those are sort of the foundational numbers. If you really look at it from a margin standpoint, we were geared up and John and I also said in my prepared remarks that we missed probably about $100 million revenue or had the opportunity for another $100 million in revenue largely in access. And obviously we were geared up from a staffing perspective to really build that revenue or deliver those products and realize that revenue. And that would have been, obviously, you think about it, that's about $0.25 of EPS in the quarter. So I think when you factor in a bit more volume and so on, I don't know that the cost price dynamic is really any different than what we've been talking about. You know, freight's maybe modestly higher than what we thought, but I would say materials versus my last assumption or last assumption we shared probably a small bit less in the fourth quarter.

[Mig Dobre:]

And then, again, you talked about things starting to normalize in the second quarter of '22. And I'm sort of curious here as to what your visibility is on that. And people already asked about pricing for access in '22, but do you recall the market is tight enough to where you actually need the pricing power in order to offset the multiple headwinds we're talking about here?

[Michael Pack:]

Yes, Mig, we're watching the cost dynamic very closely and back in the second quarter, we implemented price increases in our non-Defense businesses, in some cases we've implemented additional price increases. We're watching the commodities and we're going to continue to adjust as necessary. Obviously, we talked about - we are going to have the headwinds in the first quarter next year. When we get to the second quarter, we believe that moderates and again we're watching it closely and we're going to be responsible as we're heading into those pricing discussions with our customers.

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes, Mig. This is John. I'll just add to that. We have all-time record backlogs in the company right now, I mean, all-time in the company, never had a backlog this strong. And we feel really good about where we're headed. We feel really good about what we're doing right now. We've had really tough supply chain challenges as everyone tries to ramp up quickly. I don't think that's overly unusual. But when you couple that with the freight challenges, it becomes a little bit more unusual. When we say that it's going to norm, we believe - we don't have perfect visibility, when we believe it will normalize in second quarter, which means the first quarter of calendar year 2022, that's coming from our very mature supply chain management team that have a lot of insight, not just into our vast supply chain, but our Tier 2 and our Tier 3 supply chain. That's where that information's coming up to us from. And we've got really, really good supply chain people, who are able to manage a complex situation like this fairly well. In terms of the demand, I mean, demand is good. We provide a lot of value to our customers. We're number one in our segments. We will absolutely price responsibly. That's all I can say.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from David Raso with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

[David Raso:]

Thank you for the time. I appreciate the fourth quarter comments about year-over-year costs, right, the materials and freight costs and the temp cost reduction, but then the comment you made earlier in the call about the supply chain won't deteriorate or improve for that matter the rest of '21, I'm just trying to square that up with for Access, sequentially you saw this most recent quarter, revenues up about $185 million, and EBIT still went up $32 million, right? Not great incrementals, but still EBITDA upon on rev. The fourth quarter's implying revenues go up another $50 million, but now EBIT drops sequentially $8 million. So I'm just trying to square up the comment, no deterioration from the year, because that really suggests it does get more challenging sequentially. And then I have a quick follow-up after that if you don't mind.

[Michael Pack:]

Yes, David, this is Mike, I'll take it. I think my comments in my prepared remarks really responding to the challenge we had in the quarter that was sort of new was the availability of parts and the ability then to produce and deliver the products. So it's really commenting on the availability of parts. And so we're assuming that doesn't, in the fourth quarter, we believe it's still going to be a challenge, just more challenge than it was in our second quarter, similar to what we saw at the back-half of the third quarter. You're correct, from a supply chain perspective, our assumption was always that the price cost dynamic was going to be more challenged in the fourth quarter, and that's why, as we talked about it and even on the last earnings call, we saw about a $10 million headwind in the third quarter from a price cost, from a material escalation. And that grows to about $35 million next quarter. But that's really in alignment with what we saw last quarter.

[David Raso:]

Okay, so the availability of components doesn't deteriorate.

[Michael Pack:]

Correct, correct. Yes.

[David Raso:]

And with that increased visibility that you have, the size of your backlog, I mean, across all the businesses, but I'm specifically asking about access, given that feedback from your mature supply chain management suggesting looking into second tier suppliers, maybe things loosen up a little bit when we get into calendar 1Q, I'm curious operationally, how is that impacting your strategy when it comes to locking in costs for next year? I'm just trying to think about, that increased visibility might give you confidence that it will be a little stronger in your negotiations for price. But how are you managing your costs that you're aligning up your supply with that increased visibility of demand?

[Michael Pack:]

Yes, David, we always have a - just as we managed through the pandemic, we have a robust playbook as we manage. So it's really a combination, in some cases we have locks, we're talking to our suppliers, so there's certainly visibility that we're gaining over time. Obviously, underlying commodities have continued to escalate even over the course of the last quarter. And so, we'll continue to watch that. But when we do have larger backlogs, it does provide an opportunity for us to continue to work with our supply chain partners, and in some cases lock in our material costs.

[David Raso:]

Okay. So fair to say the increased visibility in the top line, you have taken some of that visibility and locked in more of your cost side of the equation as well, than normal?

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes, that's fair.

[David Raso:]

That's fair.

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

[Jerry Revich:]

I'm wondering if you could just talk about your thoughts around pricing mechanism heading into 2022 and longer term. Over the past couple years, we've had a lot of supply chain volatility, steel volatility, and any views on potentially setting up inflation index pricing mechanisms, so we're not looking at these types of price cost headwinds that we're talking about here with escalations this year. How are you thinking about that as we head into this coming cycle?

[Michael Pack:]

Thanks. Yes, I guess - this is Mike. I can start, maybe John will have a couple comments too. I think the bottom line is, we saw significant material inflation back in 2018. And what we typically see is, we're going to be disciplined and continue to adjust our prices, but very difficult when you have a backlog to go back and reprice that. And there is always debate around, there's always the light when you see the core raw material increase and when that reads through the supply chain. So, it's really the doubles in the details. So what we've done is, we watch it closely, we adjust price when we see changes, and as we saw in 2018, you have a bit of a headwind coming into an inflationary environment, you normalize, and then as things moderate over time, you tend to get a benefit. And we saw exactly that happen back in the first quarter of 2019 as we came out of the - really the elevated steel environment in 2018. So we don't have reason to believe that that's different, and we think that's - again it works - that's how we work with our customers and over time that's been effective.

[John Pfeifer:]

And you have to - I don't - our customers for the most part, you don't ever say anything absolutely, they don't like the indexing, because they have to forecast what their costs are going to be. And so they're trying to rely on us to forecast what the costs are going to be as opposed to doing index-type pricing.

[Jerry Revich:]

Okay. And then, separately, silver lining was really strong performance in Fire & Emergency and Commercial margins this quarter and you folks left the full year margins more or less unchanged I'm wondering is that a function of now the supply chain headwinds in access, you're starting to see those same issues hitting your suppliers in those areas or is that just a healthy respect for all of the broader supply-based moving pieces?

[John Pfeifer:]

So, from a - first of all, on a commercial front, recall we do have more price cost headwinds in that segment because they are higher users of steel. So there's about $10 million of headwind Q3 to Q4 for Commercial from a commodities perspective. Again, that will normalize just as we talked about with Access Equipment. With Fire & Emergency I would just say as you look at the implied incrementals to the fourth quarter, we have a bit of a - we have a higher mix of Commercial or third-party chassis fire apparatus that happened to be delivering in the fourth quarter versus aerials, there's a little bit of a year-over-year mix shift and a mix shift from Q3 to Q4, really a timing factor and that will normalize over time.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Ross Gilardi with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

[Ross Gilardi:]

So how much demand are you seeing from the rental companies for electrified product? And is it primarily for, you know, smaller compact equipment versus - I'm curious what's happening with your larger booms. And then just what's the likelihood of maybe even a second lag to this replacement cycle in three to five years at the rental companies propelled by their customers to carry more electrified fleet and therefore replace more of the ICE fleet that they are taking on now, prior to the end of its useful life?

[John Pfeifer:]

So, we're - Ross, we're seeing, of the products we've introduced as electric to date, we are seeing strong demand. Stronger than we had expected or put into our - our business plans. Which, of course, is a great sign. I think what we're going to see going forward is a continued increase, step-by-step of demand for electric products. And, of course, we're working on a lot as we speak in electrification, not just in access but in every single segment that we have. And you see it like the Pierce Voltara first ever electric fire truck and it's actually been on hundreds and hundreds of live runs and performing extremely well. I mean, this has gone on all over our company. In the access segment, we think that it will increase in demand at faster rates in certain regions of the world than others, but it's going to increase in demand in all regions. So in Europe, for example, it tends to be increasing faster, the demand for electrified products tends to be increasing a little faster than it is in the U.S., but we are doing it and very happy with what we're seeing in the U.S. as well. So what I can tell you is the demand for these products is real.

[Ross Gilardi:]

And then just on Fire & Emergency, when you've got this severe drought out West you've got heightened forest fire risk all over the country, is this contributing to the order growth you're seeing, if not, why not? But I would think that would be a pretty material driver of your business.

[John Pfeifer:]

Well recall that, you know, we do wildland and firefighting vehicles, but recall that most of our product is municipal fire apparatus, aerials, pumpers, that type of product. So I would suggest that, for the most part, it is not the driving factor of market improvement in Fire & Emergency for us. But there are some ancillary benefits, because we have a small product line that does address wildlife fires. And there's maybe certain traditional aerials and pumpers that are close to regions that are impacted by wildland fires that is pushing up some demand. But for the most part, that's not the demand driver for our product. Our demand driver is the aged fleet - municipalities, wanting new technology on their trucks, that kind of thing is what's pushing demand up.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Felix Boeschen with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

[Felix Boeschen:]

I have a bit of a longer-term question, but John, I know you've mentioned aftermarket expansion as a key driver for you, over called a multi-year period. I was hoping you could maybe expand on that commentary a little bit, maybe which segments you see the most opportunity going forward and whether or not we should think about that growth as being more organic or inorganically-driven, given your virtually debt-free balance sheet?

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes, I'll tell you that it's a focus across the entire enterprise, number one, in all of our businesses. I think you'll see the biggest areas of focus in our more commercial-oriented segments, particularly our access segment, our commercial specialty vehicle segment. We have plans, both organically to serve the market and grow the market for our product, but we also have inorganic opportunities that we're looking at to drive an increased participation in parts of the aftermarket we don't participate in today. So it really, it's on both fronts. We want to increase the percentage of sales that are aftermarket-driven because we believe this is an area that's really fundamentally important to our customers, the fleet owners, and important to the end user of the product. And we want to continue to make investments where it's ultimately going to support them better. And it's healthy for our company. It's less cyclical revenue streams and a lot of positives that come from it, but that's what I can tell you about it.

[Felix Boeschen:]

And then just a quick follow-up on the Volterra fire truck, curious if you could maybe expand a little bit on the feedback you've gotten so far, or maybe what other customers have said after the rollout or the announcement.

[John Pfeifer:]

Yes, the feedback's been phenomenal. The truck has performed incredibly well, as I mentioned in my opening comments. You know, hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel savings on one truck. You can imagine, as we continue to roll this out, how much environmental benefit there is, and there's a huge cost benefit for the fire departments as well. The fire truck itself functions, we've spent decades perfecting the performance of an aerial or a pumper, where it meets the needs of the firefighter, where they can be really, really productive on a site and they could be really safe on a site. So what we did was, when we designed this product, our people at F&E were brilliant with paying attention to the firefighter themselves. We didn't want to change the functionality of the product because they liked the functionality of the product. We wanted to change the propulsion, which improves the performance of the vehicle, improves the total cost of ownership of the vehicle, and improves the environmental sustainability of the vehicle. And that's what we did, but the early returns are fantastic on this product. Really a great step forward for our Pierce business.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

[Ann Duignan:]

I appreciate you sneaking me in at the top of the hour. Most of my questions have been answered, but I just wanted to take a step back on Fire & Emergency and ask one of the earlier questions slightly differently. You know, as we look at the transition of the population from urban locations to more rural locations, and we read about it every day, I wonder if this isn't a bigger driver of demand for fire trucks as some of these smaller communities all around the country are expanding and growing and now have to support larger populations. And in that context, could you just remind us, what were the sales of fire trucks at the peak of the last cycle? And is there a possibility that we could reach a higher peak next cycle just given the expansion we're seeing around the country?

[Michael Pack:]

Ann, it just from a sizing perspective, you know, we were about - this segment in total is about a two segments so we're not vastly off of what our peak revenue was in the segment. Now if you look at prior peak total market size of fire apparatus and this really goes back before the Great Recession, it was a market that was in the lower 5,000s units per year. It's really not - never recovered from that level. It's sort of hovered around the mid 4,500 unit range so just as we look going forward, I think one of the big drivers, number one, is aged fleets. We need to continue to replace those, our customers need to continue to upgrade their fleets for that average fleet age is up in the 14, 15 years right now, which is getting up there, so that's going to continue to be a tailwind. And, of course, the other piece of it is, as you have expansion into other communities, that's going to drive property tax space, more properties, that really is going to drive demand as well. So ultimately, there are some tailwinds obviously, it's great that municipalities have been more resilient through the pandemic. So we'll continue to watch as that demand continues to evolve. Of course, municipalities do have some headwinds on the pension front and so on. So there are gives and takes with that, but overall we like the outlook for that market.

[John Pfeifer:]

But Ann, this is John, I will just say, you know, your initial comment about migration to suburban and/or rural areas. I think if that continues that trend that will certainly be beneficial to the F&E, to the Fire & Emergency market. I think right now it's a little too early to tell whether that has any impact at all on the current really healthy rate of orders and backlogs. I think it probably - it does not yet. But if it continues, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's probably very positive. But we need to wait another year or so to really kind of see what's happening with that.

[Operator:]

There are no further questions. Thank you there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to John Pfeifer for any closing comments.

[John Pfeifer:]

Thanks, everyone, for joining us. We are delighted with the business performance and the trajectory of our business. We welcome you to join us this September when we have our Analyst Day. We're going to give you more detail and a little bit more clarity on what we see a little bit longer term in our business. We'll give you an up-close view of some exciting new products, some of which we've talked about today. And so, hope to see you in September. Thanks, everyone.

[Operator:]

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.