For the past few years, customers purchasing a new F-150 pickup at Marcotte Ford in Holyoke, Mass., have had to wait six to nine months to get their truck due to inventory shortages.
But lately, average wait times have plummeted to more like six to nine weeks. Instead of a few dozen trucks, there are nearly 100 on the lot now.
“We’re back to healthier inventory levels of the product that customers want,” Mike Marcotte, the dealership’s president, told Automotive News. “We have a bigger selection and we’re having an easier time swapping with other dealers if we don’t have it on the lot.”
While not universal, Marcotte’s experience is becoming more common as full-size pickup inventories recover at a faster rate than most other vehicle segments, according to data from Cox Automotive. Full-size pickups stood at an 83-day supply last week, up from about 50 a year ago, making them more plentiful than any other type of vehicle except full-size sedans and uberluxury niche models.
Among the nation’s 30 most popular nameplates, four of the five with the highest inventory relative to their sales are full-size pickups. Having some of the most popular nameplates no longer so tough to find could pay dividends for dealers entering the spring selling season.
The Ram 1500 is at a 108-day supply, the F-150 is at 97 days, the Chevrolet Silverado is at 82 days, and the GMC Sierra is at 78 days, Cox said. Already, General Motors has scheduled production downtime to keep its truck supply in check. And incentives, though still relatively low, are starting to rise — signs the industry could be returning to more normal business operations.
“We’re back to trying to turn inventory and gain market share again,” Marcotte said.
Although they declined to provide their own figures, GM and Ford said Cox’s inventory estimates are too high, with a GM spokesperson saying it had “significantly” less than 80 days’ worth.
GM CFO Paul Jacobson last week said demand for the company’s full-size pickups remains strong, noting on its first-quarter earnings call that Silverado and Sierra sales grew 3 percent in the first three months of the year, increasing the trucks’ market share by 0.3 percentage points.
“Encouragingly, April to-date performance is also trending well, as demand remains healthy, inventory levels are essentially flat, pricing has been consistent and we’re seeing a steady increase in industry volume,” Jacobson said.
A Ford spokesperson said Super Duty trucks in transit to dealers to fulfill previously placed orders account for 40 percent of the company’s inventory. Ford executives in recent months have said demand for new vehicles remains strong.
Ford F-Series sales rose 21 percent in the first quarter of 2023 from a year earlier, the company said.
Stellantis did not respond to requests for comment about its inventory level. Sales of Ram pickups fell 17 percent in the first quarter.
Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Cox Automotive, said pickup inventories are outpacing most other vehicle segments for a number of reasons. Automakers tend to stock more of them than other models because truck customers demand more choice in terms of configurations with varying bed and cab sizes.
While pickup sales for GM and Ford are strong, Krebs said there’s likely some degree of customer sticker shock as average prices hover at record levels and interest rates are rising. She said Cox’s customer survey data also shows some have looked to downsize from the segment following last year’s gasoline price spike across much of the country.
“I think there’s other alternatives,” she said. “Midsize pickup trucks aren’t all that much smaller; those sales are strong.”
Krebs said full-size pickups are far from approaching unhealthy levels but that manufacturers could take more steps to ensure they don’t creep higher, such as raising incentives or putting truck plants on downtime, as GM has done.
Jacobson said last week that GM plans “to balance supply with demand,” noting that it hopes to end 2023 with 50 to 60 days of total dealer inventory of all vehicles, although “seasonality, production schedules and timing of fleet deliveries” may temporarily take the company out of that range.
But downtime to cut supply isn’t a given, Krebs said, especially as the Detroit 3 gear up for contract negotiations with the UAW this fall.
The union, under new leadership, is taking a much more aggressive tone with the companies, and experts say there could be a strike.
To prepare for that, the companies might decide to stockpile inventory, especially of high-margin pickups.
“It may be that having extra supply would be good if a strike happens,” Krebs said.
To be sure, not everyone is seeing higher inventory levels.
Customers remain hard-pressed to find an F-150 at Chuck Anderson Ford in Excelsior Springs, Mo., even though the dealership is less than 20 miles from Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant, where the trucks are built.
General Manager Nick Anderson said the store had four F-150 pickups in stock last week. Before the pandemic, it regularly kept about 100 on the lot.
“The most I’ve had in the last few years is nine, maybe 10,” he said. “We haven’t nearly recovered from where we were.”
Anderson said he thinks his location could be to blame.
“They tend to pump inventory to the stores where Ford has lower market share so they can gain that share,” he said. “Kansas City’s definitely a Ford city. They’re kind of leaving us out to dry because they’re going to have market share whether they pump inventory here or not.”
Lindsay VanHulle contributed to this report.
