Detroit Bets On Pick-Up Of Pick-Up Sales

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

U.S. gasoline prices averaged $3.47 a gallon last week on weak demand, says Reuters. At the same time, record low mortgages instill life in the real estate market and rev up housing starts. All of this makes auto companies bet on a pick-up of pick-up sales.

What’s more, existing pick-up are getting old and creaky. 53 percent of full-size pickups are now older than 10 years and 27 percent are more than 15 years, Ford’s Americas President Mark Fields told the New York Daily News.

Carmakers are already putting more pickup on dealer lots. As of Nov. 1, Ford had 238,000 pickups in its inventory, up from 192,000 at the same time last year.

Chrysler said it will add 1,250 workers and invest $240 million in three Detroit-area plants to boost truck and engine production.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Acuraandy Acuraandy on Nov 19, 2012

    Id bet more on sales of light trucks bring up because of the oil boom in ND, MT and Alberta. It would be interesting to see what states saw most increase in sales

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    • 28-Cars-Later 28-Cars-Later on Nov 20, 2012

      @danio3834 What sort of prices are these 130km trucks going for deliverator?

  • Blowfish Blowfish on Nov 19, 2012

    record low mortgages instill life in the real estate market and rev up housing starts just talk to a mort broker here in van, the banks had been tightening the lending, the borrower must have some tax return to proof income, and many who owns cash biz was able to show little or no income, so the borrowing is going to be harder, before last june's candian new rule, if one has enuf down 35 or 50% they can ignore the tax returns record. Now is no dice. So mortgage borrowing is not as easy as it was. atleast we didnt have a giant melt down like 5yrs ago.

  • AJ AJ on Nov 19, 2012

    I don't know what they're smoking? The economy and the housing markets suck and in my opinion are only going to get worse. I've got a brother in construction management, who surprisingly has kept his job so far, and with his current work truck, his employer released it three times instead of getting him a new truck as they had always done before. So yes it's true that there are older trucks out there, but that doesn't mean they'll just replace them anytime soon when they're fighting for any small jobs that they can land.

  • DenverMike DenverMike on Nov 19, 2012

    OK, 10 year old pickups outnumber all the trucks that came before them, and they die off shortly after. Well, we assume it's just normal attrition and "they don't build them like they used to...", (aside from C4C). However, there's one pretty important thing not accounted for. Once pickups reach 10 years old, they can be legally imported in Mexico and Mexicans aren't looking for beat to death work/base trucks. They already have plenty of those. We could be losing up to a million of the best examples of 10+ year old pickups to Mexico and beyond, including stolen trucks. This is why Detroit is betting on pickups. The US inventory of used cars doesn't see nearly the same level of attrition as trucks. Cars can also be imported at 10 years old, but only at 10. Truck can be imported from 10-25 years old. Also, isn't the Peso stronger than the Dollar? When has that ever happened???

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