March Pickup Sales

Best-Selling Pickup Trucks: March 2015

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Pickup truck sales gained some momentum in March as much of the country is thawing out and more buyers are heading to dealer lots. Ford sales continue to be strong even though it just recently brought both F-150 plants to full speed. Super Dutys have been selling well, but the full and complex range of half-tons (now built in Dearborn, Mich., and Kansas City, Mo.) will be going to dealers and fleets, we expect, in larger volumes now.

The GM pickups are an interesting feature in this month's sales report. It's no surprise that Ford is outselling the combined total of Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierras (that's been true on a monthly and yearly basis for quite a while), but add in the strong-selling Colorado and Canyon, and the story is quite different. Add up the 2015 sales totals for all the Chevy and GMC choices, and GM dominates Ford pickup sales. It's also interesting to note that Ram, for the first time in a long time, sold fewer pickups this month than it did during the same month last year. For the year though, Ram has continued its streak of year-over–month sales growth to 60 months.

The popular idea (especially among truck-neutral auto writers) that the Chevy and GMC midsize choices would likely steal sales from their half-ton big brothers does not seem to be panning out. Combined monthly sales of the Colorado and Canyon are averaging just less than 10,000 units, yet Silverado and Sierra sales are both up for the month, and solidly in the green for the year. Much of that growth is happening in the half-ton segment.

As it stands, the new Colorado continues to sell just ahead of the well-established Nissan Frontier, but is still well behind (by half) gaining much ground on the segment-leading Tacoma. But, of course, that could change if the midsize segment gets more attention or tries to be more creative with customer options and features. We'll have to wait and see how they evolve. Look for our latest comparison test on this segment in the next few weeks. For now, this should be an interesting summer season as Ford and GM aggressively fight for supremacy.

PickupTrucks.com

PUTC can't even add, maybe they're using a Common Core strategy to arrive at the wrong answer.  

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"The GM pickups are an interesting feature in this month's sales report. It's no surprise that Ford is outselling the combined total of Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierras (that's been true on a monthly and yearly basis for quite a while)

From February 2015

Ford F-Series 55,236
Chevy Silverado 45,395
GMC Sierra 15,157

Simple math.

GM still can't build Colorado/Canyon inventories, as the trucks have a turn rate average of just 17 days.  The 3rd shift just started.  In the next two to three months, the real take rate should flush out.

That's if the economy holds.  Haven't seen numbers from the rest of the industry but GM's cars got hammered.  All of them.  Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac. That is compared to a year ago. Possible GM had a blow out month last year. Haven't compared to previous February 2015.

Only thing that did well this month for GM was trucks, SUV's, and marginally crossovers.

joemac wrote:

PUTC can't even add, maybe they're using a Common Core strategy to arrive at the wrong answer.  

Quote :

"The GM pickups are an interesting feature in this month's sales report. It's no surprise that Ford is outselling the combined total of Chevrolet Silverados and GMC Sierras (that's been true on a monthly and yearly basis for quite a while)

From February 2015

Ford F-Series 55,236
Chevy Silverado 45,395
GMC Sierra 15,157

Simple math.

The dude over at PUTC is preoccupied...he's still trying to lick his own balls.

Ram is within spitting distance.  It's only time.  Would be interesting to learn the breakdown of LD's, vs HD's.  I would speculate Ram's LD an HD's have gained share at the expense of Ford LD and more of GM's continual slide of HD and some Ford HD. More speculation, the GM LD's are spanking Ford's. Nothing factual to base that on, GM is able to move some metal however and I would believe it's in the half tons.

March's Fastest- and Slowest-Selling Pickups

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As regular readers know, we break down the manufacturers' monthly sales figures into smaller subsets, separating them by cab configurations. This information can tell us where the hot and slowsellers are, and what trends may be headed our way.

GM dominated both the top and bottom sellers for March. Of the fastest sellers, six of the 10 entries were new midsize or well-dressed heavy-duty models. At the other end of the spectrum — with the exception of one Ford and one Ram — GM's Chevrolet and GMC HD models took longer to sell than any other competitors.

For our fastest sellers, we set a threshold of 100 units sold in order to qualify for the list. This allows us to eliminate the limited production vehicles or packages that don't have much impact in the marketplace. We remove all such restrictions for the slowest sellers.

PickupTrucks.com

joemac wrote:

Ram is within spitting distance.  It's only time.  Would be interesting to learn the breakdown of LD's, vs HD's.

If it is anything like the last few years the Ram HDs are hammering the Chevy HDs.