Who sells the most pickup trucks in America? There is a fierce battle going on between the mainstream truck manufacturers in the United States. Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Nissan, Ram, and Toyota are all spending mind boggling amount of time and money to update their trucks and promote/advertise them in the best way possible. There is also some public trash talking going on, as well as some manufacturers ignoring each other’s claims.
What kind of trash talking? GM’s truck marketing manager said “Every truck manufacturer has their sales numbers claims, and we have our own. We sell the most trucks – period.” He later referred to the Ram Truck brand as “Fiat Ram” at a recent 2016 SEMA speech about their sales numbers. Both Ram and GM claim that they sell the “longest lasting” trucks on the road. (“Longest-lasting line of pickups” – refer to Ram’s 2017 HD Truck fact sheet; “longest-lasting full-size pickups” – refer to Chevrolet Silverado home page). Ford is claiming 39 consecutive years of F-Series pickup truck sales leadership. Here is a quote from Ford’s recent 2016 Texas Truck Rodeo press release “F-series continues to be the best-selling truck and builds on our momentum as the top-selling truck in the United States for 39 consecutive years.”
Let’s not even discuss the commercials that feature dropping of toolboxes and rocks into the truck beds.
Bottom line is, every truck manufacturer desperately wants to have their own “best of” claim and use it to attract buyers. So, who sells the most pickup trucks in America?
First, let’s define the “pickup trucks”vehicle class. A pickup truck is any vehicles with an open cargo bed behind the passenger cabin, and a vehicle which is meant for consumer use. This means that full-size SUVs, commercial vans, medium duty commercial trucks are not included. We could include the vans and medium duty trucks, but this will be done in another report.
Let’s do the quick math below.
Full-Size Truck Sales – October 2016
| Oct 2016 # | Oct 2016/2015 | YTD 2016 # | YTD 2016/2015 % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford F-Series | 65,542 | 0.1% | 661,198 | 5.0% |
| Chevrolet Silverado | 49,768 | -3.6% | 475,324 | -3.5% |
| Ram | 43,891 | 6.9% | 404,977 | 8.1% |
| GMC Sierra | 15,050 | -18.7% | 179,490 | -0.4% |
| Toyota Tundra | 9,533 | 0.2% | 94,355 | -4.8% |
| Nissan Titan | 3,181 | 260.7% | 14,155 | 36.1% |
Ford F-Series has sold 661,198 pickups so far this year. GM sold 654,814 Silverados and Sierras together. The margin is thin between the two and anything can happen in the next two months. Ram is still growing by a healthy amount, and the Nissan Titan is picking up momentum with the introduction of the light duty Titan.
Midsize Truck Sales – October 2016
| Oct 2016 # | Oct 2016/2015 | YTD 2016 # | YTD 2016/2015 % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toyota Tacoma | 15,875 | 4.2% | 158,586 | 6.5% |
| Chevrolet Colorado | 10,578 | 49.9% | 90,625 | 28.9% |
| Nissan Frontier | 6,364 | 33.6% | 69,388 | 45.6% |
| Honda Ridgeline | 3,371 | NEW | 16,118 | NEW |
| GMC Canyon | 2,785 | 15.3% | 29,991 | 20.7% |
If you add all of the midsize and full-size trucks for each brand together, here is the following order.
GM sold: 775,430 pickups
Ford sold: 661,198 pickups
Ram sold: 404,977 pickups
Toyota sold: 252,941 pickups
Nissan sold: 83,543 pickups
Honda sold: 16,118 pickups
GM is number one in pickup truck sales when you combine all midsize and full-size pickup trucks.
Check out this related TFLtruck video of the 2017 Ford F-150 with the 2nd-gen 3.5L EcoBoost V6 and a 10-speed Automatic transmission:
