Cain's Segments: Trucks – July 2014

Timothy Cain
by Timothy Cain

These are not normal times for America’s pickup truck market.

The best-selling pickup truck line, Ford’s F-Series, is now entering a transition phase many months after potential customers first witnessed its aluminum-intensive replacement.

Toyota, long a minor player in the full-size category, refreshed its Tundra and continues to achieve notable sales increases, though with gradually less impressive growth figures.

GM’s twins last combined to outsell the Ford F-Series in 2009. They should still seem fresh, but to many the redesign wasn’t, in visual terms, sufficiently differentiated from the GMT900 models. Through the first seven months of 2014, the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trail the Ford F-Series by 35,610 units.

TruckJuly2014ShareJuly2013Share7 mos. 2014 Share7 mos. 2013ShareFord F-Series37.2%37.4%37.7%39.3%Chevrolet Silverado/GMC Sierra35.1%36.3%34.6%35.7%Ram P/U21.0%19.4%21.0%18.5%Toyota Tundra6.1%6.1%6.0%5.6%Nissan Titan0.6%0.7%0.7%0.9%—————Full-Size Share Of Total Pickup Truck Market89.3%87.5%89.1%87.2%Full-Size Pickup Share Of Total Industry11.8%12.3%11.8% 11.9%


Ram has placed a six-cylinder diesel in their 1500-series lineup alongside a naturally-aspirated six-cylinder which generates more than 300 horsepower.

There are currently only three non-full-size pickups available: Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier, Honda Ridgeline.

The Tacoma is America’s fourth-best-selling pickup nameplate, yet despite the dearth of competition Tacoma sales are down 7% this year and it accounts for just 6.9% of all pickups sold, down from 7.6% during the first seven months of 2013. The forthcoming arrival of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon, will presumably alter the field on which the Tacoma and Frontier have been farming.

This isn’t 2005, when American Honda reported its first 42,000 Ridgeline sales; when Isuzu began selling its i-Series pickups and Mitsubishi its Raider; when Lincoln sold more than 10,000 Mark LTs; when Subaru marketed the Baja and GM sold the retractable hardtop Chevrolet SSR. (When, incidentally Subaru and GM were ending their bizarre relationship.)

Not unpredictably, Ford has seen its F-Series lose market share in 2014. Year-over-year, GM’s share of the full-size pickup segment slid from 36.3% to 35.1% in July 2014; GM’s year-to-date share has decreased by more than a percentage point.

Ram is the clear beneficiary, rising from 19.4% in July 2013 to 21% in July 2014; increasing its year-to-date tally from 18.5% during the first seven months of 2013 to 21% in the same period this year.

The Ram pickup range has increased its volume by 37,848 units over the first seven months of 2014 in a category that has only grown by 47,934 units.

Reported sales of full-size pickup trucks are growing, but not quite at the pace of the overall auto market. These six truck nameplates generated 123 out of every 1000 new vehicle sales in July 2013, but that figure fell to 118/1000 in July 2014.

The times are not normal; neither are they extraordinary. Think back again to the valley through which the automobile industry was passing in 2009, when the Silverado/Sierra last generated greater U.S. sales volume than the F-Series. In the whole calendar year GM reported barely more than 428,000 sales. Ford has sold more than 429,000 F-Series pickups already this year.

TruckJuly2014July2013%Change7 mos.20147 mos.2013%ChangeFord F-Series63,24060,4494.6%429,065427,9350.3%Chevrolet Silverado42,09742,0800.1%282,776284,666-0.7%Ram P/U35,62131,31413.8%239,481201,63318.8%GMC Sierra17,48816,5825.5%110,679104,2156.2%Toyota Tundra10,3129,8205.0%68,29961,38511.3%Nissan Titan1,0721,168-8.2%7,48810,020-25.3%—— —————Total169,830161,4135.2%1,137,7881,089,8544.4%

Timothy Cain
Timothy Cain

More by Timothy Cain

Comments
Join the conversation
4 of 30 comments
  • Billfrombuckhead Billfrombuckhead on Aug 04, 2014

    Ram has the most impressive increases, bust 20% market share and barely gets mentioned but Toyota has a minuscule increase and gets mentioned?

    • LectroByte LectroByte on Aug 04, 2014

      I see two whole paragraphs (at least) mentioning Ram's, do you need new glasses?

  • IHateCars IHateCars on Aug 05, 2014

    I saw a Ram EcoDiesel Laramie Limited 4X4 crew cab on the lot over the weekend....fully loaded, up here in the Great White North. The sticker was a few dollars under $70K....$70K!!! Before taxes! I wonder how many of them will sell at that price....

    • LALoser LALoser on Aug 05, 2014

      Well...let's think...Ram Truck, or Hellcat...hmmmm...

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
Next