Navistar, Oshkosh Receive Truck Orders From Pentagon

Oshkosh Corp. (OSK) and Navistar International Corp. (NAV) will supply most of the 2,800 armored patrol trucks ordered by the U.S. Department of Defense last week for troops in Afghanistan, a department memo said.

Oshkosh, which has already received orders for 6,600 all-terrain versions of the military's Mine Resistant Ambush Protected truck, or MRAP, will build an additional 1,460 trucks under the Jan. 29 order issued by Ashton Carter, under secretary of defense.

Navistar, meanwhile, will build 1,060 of its latest model of the MRAP, which it calls the MRAP-Dash. The balance of the order will come from the Canadian unit of General Dynamics Corp. (GD), which will supply 250 of its MRAPs, and from BAE Systems PLC (BAESY, BA.LN), which will build 33 trucks.

Navistar, BAE and General Dynamics have built several thousand of the heavily armored trucks for troops in Iraq, but Oshkosh has received most of the truck orders for Afghanistan in the past year as the military opted for the Wisconsin company's lighter, more maneuverable version of the MRAP for Afghanistan's rugged, mountainous landscape.

Many of the MRAPs built for Iraq were deemed to be too heavy for Afghanistan's network of unpaved roads. Navistar and other defense contractors have recently introduced new suspension systems for their trucks that are intended to improve the vehicles' off-road performance.

The latest truck orders are expected to bring Illinois-based Navistar closer to its goal of $2.2 billion in military sales during its 2010 fiscal year. Some analysts estimate that Navistar's MRAP order will be worth $1 billion.

Navistar and Oshkosh have relied on military truck sales to offset slumping sales of commercial trucks in recent years. The truck orders were first reported Tuesday by Defense Newsstand, an online arm of defense-industry trade publication Inside Defense.

Navistar's stock was recently trading down 5.4% at $38.73, while Oshkosh's stock was off 3.6% at $38.21.

-By Bob Tita, Dow Jones Newswires; 312-750-4129; [e-mail]