May was a good month for light trucks, as that segment of the industry grew for what seems like the 398756th month in a row.
It hasn’t actually been that long, of course, but talking heads are once again pegging the entire American market to crest 17 million units in 2018, roughly on par with last year. The difference? A greater percentage of that will be comprised of trucks and SUVs. There was one more selling day in May 2018 compared to May 2017.
The beyond-dominant sales king of the truck hill, Ford’s F-Series, was up eleven percent for its strongest May month since we were all still worried about the Y2K bug. In fact, the nameplate has busted through the 80,000 per month mark four times over the last nine months. Trucks in total were up almost 10% at the Blue Oval, with F-Series counting for 84,639 units in the ‘sold’ column. It’s also worth noting the new Navigator is selling at more than double the rate of the old SUV.
READ MORE: Tracking Trucks: April Sales Strong for Ford, Ram Falters, GM Says Nothing
At FCA, customers took about 2000 more Ram pickups home than the same month last year, making for 46,781 new Rams plying the streets and worksites of America. That’s a slight increase over May 2017. On the year though, the truck is down a full 8%. Whether this is thanks to launch issues – only the Hemi engine in Quad or Crew cab configurations are readily available in the new Ram – or a reaction of the Ram faithful to the truck’s new styling choices remains unknown.
Any talk of Chevrolet and GMC is purely speculative, as The General has deemed us slovenly journalists unworthy of specific sales numbers until the year’s second-quarter is over at the end of June. Analysts are predicting that the company had a positive month, boosted by popular new SUVs and rebates on everything else.
Sales of light trucks at Toyota were also brisk, with Tacoma sales up 21.1 percent last month and up a similar amount year-to-date. In fact, the manufacturer has moved nearly 100,000 of its mid-sizers since January 1st. A total of 10,062 Tundra pickups shuffled off to new driveways in May, a number that’s about even with 2017.
Proving the argument that Nissan doesn’t really need to plow money into a new Frontier, the truck that’s seemingly older than time itself continues to sell strongly. Its month-over-month performance was off by about 800 units but it carries a remarkable 17.4% increase in yearly volume into June. The full-sized Titan, whose numbers include both the standard and XD models, were down 23.5% to 3779 units in May and are down 5.4% to 19,173 units in 2018.
Jeep continues to be the engine that drives FCA. The brand itself has increased its volume an astonishing 22% so far this year and was up about the same amount last month compared to the same time frame one year prior. The Wrangler nameplate has already crested the 100,000 unit mark in annual sales, well before the halfway point in the year. A total of 25,102 Wranglers vanished from showrooms last month.
Keep in mind that both JL and JK Wranglers are counted in that figure, as there are still a few of the latter loitering around dealer lots. Not that we should expect Jeep sales to fall off a cliff once they’re gone, of course, as the new Wrangler has been warmly received by journalists and the buying public. The Compass and Cherokee are also far outselling their efforts last year.