By Matt Fredmonsky
Record-Courier staff writer
Even in rural Portage County, consumers are buying fewer pick-up trucks than they once did to drive around the farm and on dusty township back roads.
Local auto dealers are beginning to see Portage County car buyers fall in line with a growing national trend " purchasing fewer trucks and SUVs.
Don Wise, the general manager at Wise Chevrolet in Randolph, said customers walking onto his lot are gravitating towards smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and spending less time looking at trucks.
"There's still a lot of businesses that just can't get by without full-size trucks," Wise said. "We've been lucky to have some commercial accounts that buy trucks from us. But definitely ... the general public isn't coming in and buying an SUV if they can get away with a car now. This is probably going to be the first year in the last eight or 10 years that we sell more cars than trucks."
Last month, GM reported sales of full-size pick-up trucks, including the Silverado, Avalanche, TrailBlazer and Tahoe, dropped 25 percent compared to June 2007. Sales of those same trucks dropped 27 percent in the first half of 2008.
Overall, GM's car brands, including Pontiac, Saturn and Cadillac, experienced an 8 percent rise in retail passenger car sales last month.
Major manufacturers are struggling to adapt to changing needs of the automotive consumer. Last week, Toyota announced plans to dramatically scale back, and even stop, production on some of its truck and SUV models by idling or closing plants and shifting its focus to hybrids and small cars.
And GM, like Ford, has already shuttered several plants. The Lordstown facility soon will see an influx of approximately 1,400 workers to begin a third shift to ramp up Cobalt production and to prepare for the Fuze, GM's planned 2011 small car model replacement for the Cobalt.
On many dealer lots, popular SUVs are adding to inventories.
At Great Lakes Hyundai in Streetsboro, general manager Bob Petrus said sales of SUV models, from the entry-level Tuscon to the top of-the-line Vera Cruz, are lagging.
Sales are up for Petrus in his Accents, Elantras and Sonatas " all cars that come standard with modest four-cylinder engines.
Petrus said his warranties are becoming popular with customers who are looking to keep their vehicles much longer before trading in or buying new.
"We also see a lot of people that aren't necessarily wanting to trade in their big SUVs because they understand they are going to take a big hit because of depreciation of those vehicles," he said. "They are searching out inexpensive used cars they can drive back and forth to work instead of driving their big SUVs."
Last month, Ford reported decreasing sales for all its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury cars, crossovers, SUVs, trucks and vans. Ford heavy trucks experienced the biggest hit with a 57 percent drop in sales last month compared to June 2007, with Ford SUV sales falling 55 percent in the same period.
And Toyota, which overtook GM this year as the leader in U.S. sales, reported an overall 10 percent decrease in June sales compared to this time last year. Toyota's light truck sales fell 32 percent in the same period.
Rich Klaben, president of Klaben Auto Stores in Kent, believes last month's dramatic sales declines do not signal the end of the truck or SUV despite $4 a gallon gas.
Klaben believes market hysteria is more to blame for running off SUV and truck customers and eventually those customers with a need for those vehicles will return.
"There were really a lot of people in those vehicles who really didn't need them," Klaben said.
He points to the Ford F-Series pick-up truck ranking as the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. for the past 31 years and said there will always be a need for trucks in America to either pull a favorite recreational vehicle or work 40 hours a week.
"Even with a fall off ... it's still going to represent a huge market," Klaben said. "It's just a matter of manufacturers aligning supply with demand. But this past month has been more a product of a pullback in general because of the economic signals."
Klaben operates two facilities in Kent and one in Warren. Klaben, like Wise in Randolph, has actually experienced sales numbers very similar to last year. However, Wise attributes his success to dealer attrition in Portage County and Ravenna in particular.
"The market can and will digest a lot more units than it is at the June pace," Klaben said. "We've been in worse positions than this over the years. It's cyclical. The difference in this is when we come out of it there will be redefined market segments."