The full-size pickup truck woes continue to worsen, leaving even mighty Toyota little choice but to slow production of its Tundra model. In fact, Toyota's brand new plant in San Antonio that was built just for the Tundra will be shutting down a total of 14 days between now and October. Full-time workers at the plant will be able to use vacation days, take the time off unpaid or find something else at the plant to do while the assembly line is halted.
Unfortunately, temp-to-hire workers aren't so lucky. Two-hundred employees who were hoping to land full-time positions at the plant will be laid off this summer. Toyota spokesman Mike Goss says, "We have a very long-term view of that factory in Texas. We're trying not to overreact. We're trying not to shut it down." Whoa... back up. Shut it down? We hadn't heard any such thing until it was spoken by Goss. Sounds like things are just as bad for Toyotas with beds as they are for pickups from Detroit.
Another victim of the downturn in sales of full-size pickup trucks was revealed today as Dodge will be closing its Saltillo plant in northern Mexico for a period of two weeks. The plant produced nearly 170,000 Ram trucks last year. Yesterday, Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli indicated that Ram production would need to be adjusted to reflect weak customer demand, and this seems to be the adjustment. According to reports, the plant was idled on Monday and its two-thousand workers are set to return to work on June 23. Last month, sales of the Ram fell by an alarming twenty-five percent. We'd imagine that the last thing Chrysler wants is a large stock of unsold 2008 Ram trucks as it readies the 2009 model, which will thankfully get somewhat better fuel mileage.
Dodge is certainly not the only automaker finding it tough to move large pickups off dealer lots. Both Ford and GM have placed large incentives on their pickups and Toyota, Nissan and Honda have or will shift truck production to passenger cars at plants capable of making the switch.
Could the reign of Ford's F-Series atop the sales charts in the U.S. come to an end? Some believe that it could indeed happen, and it's not even another pickup truck that is threatening the Blue Oval's bread-and-butter full-size pickup, it's the Toyota Camry. Let that sink in for a moment... alright, let's continue. The Camry already posted better sales numbers than the Chevy Silverado, the perennial second-best seller to the F-Series, for the month of April. In fact, the Silverado suffered a sales drop of 24.7 percent to 37,231 units while the Camry grabbed 40,016 sales in the same month. Still, even after the Camry's great sales month, the Silverado holds the edge when the entire year-to-date sales numbers are compiled, and the F Series still sits atop the list for now. Consider too that the Ford truck will get a major redesign for the upcoming model year. So, while high gas prices will likely continue to put pressure on full-size pickups, let's not jump to hasty conclusions just yet.
