Pickup Truck Sales In US Hit 25-Year Low - NYT

[hatrack]

EDIT

Sales of pickups have declined sharply this year, more than the drop in overall vehicle sales, which are at their lowest in 25 years.

In 2004, for example, auto companies sold nearly 2.5 million pickups in the United States, many of which were used as everyday transportation, not just as work trucks or to haul trailers. This year, the industry likely will sell only about a million trucks.

The downturn in pickup sales is putting new pressure on the finances of automakers, which for years earned significant profit from trucks. In Pontiac, G.M. is shutting down the 3.4-million-square-foot truck plant that has been a fixture for 37 years in this industrial city about 20 miles north of Detroit. Some of the production will be handled by a third shift at an assembly plant in Indiana. For the 1,100 workers who will lose their jobs in Pontiac, the closing represents the end of an era when G.M. could not build gas-guzzling pickups fast enough to meet consumer demand.

One worker, Garey Knop, said that rising gas prices last year and the weak economy combined to kill the pickup boom. “Four-dollar gas put the nail into it,” said Mr. Knop, a pipefitter who has worked at the Pontiac plant the last 12 years. “I drive 110 miles a day, and I wouldn’t drive one of these trucks.”

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/30truck.html?_r=1

[excess_3]

1. welcome news .nt

[phantom power]

2. Maybe moving back toward older regime where...

the people who owned them were mostly people who actually needed them?

[XemaSab]

3. Going by the stats in Redding, California

there's a real problem with feminizing chemicals here. :hide:

[NNadir]

4. I feel I "need" a pick up truck to carry my swell solar set up around to various solar festivals

around the country.

How else would I display how "environmental" I am.

Then I want to haul my naked ass up a glacier to protest climate change, and I'll "need" a pick up truck to carry my glacier rappelling equipment.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/naked-glacier-tunick-08182007

[phantom power]

5. I used to laugh at our kayaking lifestyle. 12 hours of driving for 4 hours of paddling.

Although the act of kayaking itself uses no fossil fuels, it is not exactly a fossil-fuel-free sport.

[NNadir]

6. It sort of reminds me of the great environmental advantages of having

50 networks drive to the "Maine Solar House" to film and the system.

I should have called all the networks to come view my high efficiency gas furnace when I had it installed.

Do you think I could have been on the Today show?

[phantom power]

8. I believe you would have to first build your own H2 storage tanks.

That would get you on TV.

[NNadir]

10. You mean that there's something unusual about having hydrogen tanks?

I really can't believe that especially after the great wind powered hydrogen project on Utsira that we had 500 threads about here in the early 2000's and of course, the hydrogen HYPErcar that will be in showrooms by 2005, and...

Let's not forget Governor Hydrogen Hummer's hydrogen filling stations...

Whatever happened to the big Norwegian wind-to-hydrogen program, by the way? Wasn't it supposed to save us?

[Kolesar]

7. Regular automobiles are at "close to a 25 year low" also...eom

[NickB79]

9. The link does mention that

"Sales of pickups have declined sharply this year, more than the drop in overall vehicle sales, which are at their lowest in 25 years."