All Entries Tagged With: "fleet vs retail"
Numbers Show Tundra Is Poised to Eclipse GMC Sierra, Possibly Overtake Ram 1500
Over the last few weeks, PickupTrucks.com has published both 2012 half-ton retail sales figures and 2012 total half-ton sales, which gives us the data we need to talk about “fleet mix,” or the percentage of trucks that Ford, GM, Ram-Fiat, Toyota, and Nissan sell to fleets.
- F-150 sales – 19.1% fleet
- Sierra 1500/Silverado 1500 sales – 11.5% fleet
- Ram 1500 – 12.3% fleet
- Tundra – 4.2% fleet
- Titan – 16.5% fleet
These numbers show that Ford is the king of fleet sales, and that Toyota doesn’t depend on fleet transactions nearly as much as the rest of the truck manufacturers listed.
Why does this matter? Because fleet sales should never be compared to retail sales, as a fleet buyer has very little in common with a retail buyer (more on that below). Yet despite this inequality between a fleet buyer and a retail buyer, Ford, GM, and Ram-Fiat are never shy about quoting total sales numbers (which include fleet) and then using these numbers to brag about their “increased share.”
Specifically, if we look at retail numbers only, Toyota’s share of the retail half-ton truck market is about 9.5%, and that number is only going to grow as the 2014 model hits the street.
Fleet Sales Don’t Compare to Retail Sales – Even With Trucks
If you’ve been following the auto industry long enough, at some point you’ll hear someone talk about the negatives of fleet sales. What follows is a basic review of the difference between a fleet sale and a retail sale and an explanation of the fleet buying process. If you’re interested in why fleet-heavy truck sales figures from Ford, GM, and Chrysler should be discounted when compared to Tundra sales, this post might be interesting to you.
If not, you might want to skip it (there is some math involved). Here we go.
