May Pickup Sales

Best-Selling Pickup Trucks: May 2015

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May was a strong sales month for full-size pickup trucks, with the glaring exception of Ford's F-Series. Even with all its plants online and producing at or near peak efficiency, Ford is the only heavy-duty and light-duty pickup maker in the red. The Chevrolet Silverado and Toyota Tacoma are this month's standout players, with segment-leading sales increases for each.

Additionally, GM also has a lot of be happy about with the strengthening sales numbers behind its all-new midsize Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon. It looks as if GM will reach its unofficial goal of 100,000 units by year-end. Total GM sales numbers are soundly outpacing Ford's.

Ram continues its strong showing, increasing month-over-month sales for more than five years. Unfortunately, these same strong sales could mean we'll have to wait a little bit longer for the next-generation of the Ram 1500 to come to market. With Jeep and Ram sales so strong lately, waiting a little longer to upgrade the models means dealers will have plenty of inventory to sell — not a bad problem to have when your products are hot.

The biggest surprise of the month might be that the stout-and-sturdy Nissan Frontier, which had been selling well due to aggressive pricing strategies; it's now in a significant slump. That strategy did not work in May, with monthly sales down almost 20 percent; year-to-date sales are on par with last year.

PickupTrucks.com

May's Fastest and Slowest Selling Pickups

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Six of the top 10 fastest-selling pickup trucks in May were midsize players in the form of the Chevrolet Colorado, Toyota Tacoma and GMC Canyon, in the crew and extended-cab versions. As the weather begins to turn warmer and more people think about upgrading, replacing or downsizing their aging vehicles, the fuel economy and price benefits of the smaller pickups seem to be winning, even when fuel prices are still relatively low for most of the country.

To arrive at the fastest and slowest sellers, we use Cars.com sales data collected from dealerships around the country. Our top 10 fastest sellers must meet a minimum threshold of sales in order to weed out special packages and "unicorns." The majority of cab configurations on both lists are crew cab. For May the extra-large Tundra CrewMax cab qualified as a fast seller, while the Ram MegaCab proved to be a slow seller. We should note that our slowest sellers do not have to meet a minimum sales requirement, which gave us a range between a low-volume GMC Sierra 3500 extended cab to the Chevy Silverado 1500 crew cab, one of the highest volume sellers of the month.

It's worth noting that some of the pickups on the lists below could be affected by both national and regional incentives, which could prejudice buyers in one direction or another. For example, when manufacturers look at the numbers from a pair of lists like this, we'd guess there could be fewer incentives for the F-150 crew cab in June (already selling very well) and probably some more money on the hood of the Silverado 1500 crew cab (not doing that well). Of course, there are many other factors that go into a corporate financial decision like incentives. The best way to find bargains is to visit local dealerships.

PickupTrucks.com

Ford better ratchet up the incentives.  GM for the year has nearly a 4500 unit lead for the year.  Ford has appeared to have lost share to GM and Dodge.

Would assume that GM is killing it in the half tons, typically Ford and Dodge outsell the GM HD's substantially.

I'm thinking the whole aluminum thing, on top of the lack-luster ecoboost (3.5) fuel economy is starting to hurt the blue ovals sales.

In the long run it may help. I think people want to see how easy a body shop can get it fixed before committing to buying one.

There was a statement in an article a while back that summarized the issue.  Paraphrasing here.  Pickup buyers want capabilities, utility, style with specific set of desires.  Pickup buyers don't buy a pickup because it's aluminum. The aluminium aspect is pull through nice to have, it's not a primary point of consideration when evaluating pickup choices.

Maybe it's more simplistic and simply Ford is struggling with inventory and trim mix availability. We'll see in the coming months.

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Of course, Ford has been slowed by the lengthy process of ramping up 2015 F-150 production, and there’s a very good chance it will climb back into first place once F-150 inventories get up to more-normal levels. Still, GM has to be feeling good at the moment, and it will be worth watching how much cash Chevy and GMC throw on the hood in the months ahead to keep it a close race.

https://pickupownersgroup.forumotion.com/t1322-sales-rivalries

Media pains itself it seems to factually validate statements with actual metrics.

Inventory then again.... Why all the cash on the hood if inventory is an issue?

Ford running short of F-150 frames

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Like most any automaker, Ford is eager to build as many F-150 pickups as it can sell. And considering that the truck has long stood as the top selling vehicle in the United States, that means building (and selling) a lot of them. Further, Ford reports that its factories are finally fully up to speed and ready to build as many F-150s as dealers can sell.

Unfortunately another factor is reportedly preventing the new aluminum-bodied pickup from reaching its potential. According to Automotive News and as we've heard before, the Blue Oval automaker has had trouble getting its hands on as many frames as it needs. Though Ford would not confirm the shortage itself, AN cites union sources in reporting that the Metalsa plant in Kentucky, which produces the new F-150's frame for Ford, has been unable to meet the demand for more such frames.

"Whenever you have launches, you have issues that you have to deal with in the supply base," is all Ford CFO Bob Shanks would admit. "We're always working closely with suppliers if there's an issue to sort it out. If that were the case, that's what we'd be doing."

The reported supply shortage could be why plans for overtime production are reportedly being canceled at both the plants in Kansas City and Dearborn where the F-150s are assembled, despite reaching or nearing full capacity. The shortage could also help explain why, according to AN, sales of the F-Series in the United States fell nearly 10 percent last month, while the rest of the pickup market rose 17 percent.

AutoBlog

The frame are steel, so toss out the move to aluminum excuse. The automotive industry is all about supply chain. Someone or a bunch of people dropped the ball to not have the volume of frames solidified on the project schedule. It's not like this snuck up on them. There's a business risk as well to all the thousands of parts that constitute a complete vehicle. Frame quantities would undoubtedly be a priority comparatively to say some of the component subsystems. Big swing and a miss here, that has the effect of real dollars, in substantial quantity.

joemac wrote:

The frame are steel, so toss out the move to aluminum excuse.  

The aluminum excuse was simply a guess on my part. Not the first time I've been wrong, and won't be the last either.

Wasn't meant to reference if any one person was right or wrong.  Simply asking questions of the narrative that's passed around the interwebs.

Ran across this comment off of Automotive News from Mark LaNeve and Mark Fields who stated that May should be the low point, with full recovery later in the year.  I would ask them to qualify later. Later being this quarter, Q4? December? What's the ramp rate look like. 20% recovery of the delta each month?

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Ford, meanwhile, is scrambling to boost production of its aluminum truck. One of two F-150 plants is in its final month of ramping up production, and a shortage of high-strength steel frames built by a supplier in Kentucky has slowed output at both plants.

The frame shortage has limited supplies further, forcing Ford to cancel some overtime shifts and send workers home early on multiple occasions in the past few months.

"If you think about all the complexity, cab types and bed sizes, and take that across 3,000 dealers ... that's going to limit our opportunities in the market," Ford's U.S. marketing, sales and service chief, Mark LaNeve, said in a conference call last week. "May was the low point, and it gets better every month from there."

LaNeve said the F-150 ramp-up plan called for inventories to hit their lowest levels in May. Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of the Americas, also said in an April 30 interview that May was projected to be a low point for availability of the truck.

Facing tight inventories, Ford chose not to participate in Memorial Day-themed sales, LaNeve said.

"We feel good about our number given those constraints," LaNeve said.

"Later this year, we're going to really be able to run at the market with full availability."

Curious Mark if you feel good about your number currently, what would the feeling had been if you had hit the number that you really wanted to hit?  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?  Since Ford has a considerable dependency on the F-150 for the entire company, feeling good?  BS.  As the F-150 goes so does Ford.