After a strong start to this year, truck sales are starting to level off.
Levelling off, yes, but certainly not cratering. It was a mixed bag of growth and contraction when comparing sales to the same month one year ago but numbers are up across the board for all brands through the first ten months of 2018.
Well, number are up for the manufacturers who deem us worthy of monthly sales figures, at least. GM decided earlier this year to play their cards close to the chest, refusing to spill the beans of their monthly activities and moving to a quarterly reporting system instead. We will have to wait until January to learn how many trucks The General moved off the lot at this time of year.
Perennial best-seller Ford sold a total of 70,438 F-Series pickup trucks in October, a decrease of about 5500 units compared to last October. Overall, the Blue Oval has sold 749,456 pickups so far in 2018, which represents an increase of over 15,000 trucks when held against last year’s numbers.
Ram has finally figured out whatever was ailing the launch of its new half-ton, seeing its fortunes soar by leaps and bounds. The brand recorded an 11.3% leap in October over 2017 and is recouping its losses from earlier this year in fine style. A total of 424,769 Rams have rolled out the door in 2018, a 1.4% increase. With new boss Mike Manley on record with fightin’ words against his two largest competitors, expect this trend to continue well into 2019.
Surprising absolutely no one, Jeep continues to be the primary engine powering the fortunes of FCA. The brand as a whole is up nearly 19%, lifted by stellar Wrangler numbers, a model whose numbers are up almost 25% all on their own. The Jeep brand will be knocking on 1,000,000 units by the time New Year’s rolls around.
We don’t know who’s buying all the Tacoma pickups … but we’re glad they are. In fact, the Tacoma and Wrangler are enjoying nearly identical total sales and a similar growth spurt. Big-brother Tundra was off last month but is up 1.7% so far this year, giving Toyota a boost amid a marketplace that’s increasingly shunning the four-door sedan.
Studying sales report from Nissan revealed the company sold exactly the same number of Titans this October as last October. With the volume of trucks sold in America, that feat doesn’t happen too often. A total of 4114 Titans were sold, along with 6302 Frontiers. With the smaller truck continuing to outperform itself month after month, there’s little practical incentive for the company to plow the acres of money it would take to develop a new Frontier. Although when they do, you can bank on your author making the Dad joke of it being the ‘final Frontier’.
Check out the chart shown above for detailed numbers of American truck sales in October.