2018 F-150 Power Stroke Diesel

In the month of February, Ford and its truck division continued to crush its competition like beetles under its feet, showing gains where others suffered losses.

Full-sized pickup sales for The General were in the negative last month, with the Silverado slipping 16.3% year-over-year to 42,282 deliveries in February. That’s a drop of about 3000 units in the first two months of this year compared to the same period in 2017.

READ MORE: Tracking Trucks: A Strong Month Kicks Off 2018

Sierra deliveries are even further in the toilet, dropping by nearly a quarter both last month and year-to-date. It is still GMC’s best selling unit though, with 12,162 pickups sold in February and 24,386 so far this year. This author’s fearless prediction? GM fans are waiting for the 2019 model to hit showrooms before pulling the trigger.

2018 Chevrolet Suburban

Notably, even though we don’t usually report on it, Suburban deliveries were up nearly 30% in February to just over five thousand units. Even if a chunk of them are fleet (23.5% of total GM sales last month were just that), it still marks a large jump. We’ll be keeping an eye on the Suburban nameplate in next month’s report, for sure. The Yukon and Yukon XL did not enjoy such gains.

GM’s mid-size duo, the Colorado and Canyon, again drift further apart in terms of popularity. The Chevy increased its sales by 7% to 8050 deliveries, while the GMC sank 22% to 2319 units sold.

F-Series sales remained strong in February, rising 3.5% to 68,243 units. Ford says that’s the best February in 18 years and marks ten full months of consecutive gains. So far this year, 127,180 pickups have driven away from Ford dealerships, a 2.6% increase.

The entire Ford brand is off by a not-insubstantial 6% this year, so it is especially critical to company coffers that their trucks continue to sell at a torrid pace. It’ll be a few more months before we can start reporting Ranger numbers in these posts.

Ram, for its part, saw sales slip by fifteen percent to 33,299 pickups last month, when compared to the same timeframe one year ago. This could be due to a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is the Ram faithful holding onto their wallets until the 2019 units hit dealer lots. For the first two months of 2018, Ram has sold about 10,000 fewer pickups than during January and February last year.

The Tacoma and Tundra brothers remain healthy, posting solid increases in volume last month. A total of 16,817 Tacos left dealer lots, while 7977 customers chose to sign on the dotted line for an opportunity to drive a truck named after the frozen north. Those are gains of 18.0% and 10.3% respectively compared to February 2017. Year-to-date gains are even better, with the Tacoma up a quarter and the Tundra up over 12%.

Meanwhile, Nissan trucks are selling as if their gloveboxes contain free money. The Frontier was up over 60% (yes, you read that right) in February to 7992 units sold and is up about the same amount so far this year to 13,893 deliveries. At this rate, don’t expect Nissan to replace their aged mid-sizer anytime soon. Why would they? The thing is literally printing money for the company.

The Titan is enjoying similar success, increasing its take rate to 3761 trucks sold last month and 7812 sold so far this year. Both those figures are healthy double-digit increases versus the same period twelve months ago.

All-new 2018 Jeep® Wrangler Rubicon and All-new 2018 Jeep® Wra

Jeep

The Jeep brand surged in sales, largely thanks to gains observed by both the compass and Wrangler nameplates. In fact, both the Wrangler and Compass sold approximately the same number of units in February, 15,936 and 16,026 respectively. Both of those models have been extensively refurbished and it seems to have been money well spent. The American buying public’s seemingly insatiable thirst for crossovers and SUVs surely doesn’t hurt either.

Across all its models, Jeep sold just over 70,000 units in February and a total of 129,723 so far this year. Those are increases of 12% and 7%, respectively.