Ford Motor Co. saw strong demand in utilities “almost across the board” in August, said Mark LaNeve, Ford’s vice president of U.S. marketing, sales and service, during a conference call this morning.
“Utilities are hot right now, we performed incredibly well,” he said. “Improved availability helped make August the strongest sales month this year for F-Series. We also had our best month of Ford SUV sales in 12 years,” LaNeve said in an earlier statement. Ford’s SUV sales increased 12% in August, compared to the year prior.
In fact, Ford hit several record-highs last month. At 234,237 vehicles – up 5.4% year-over year – Ford sales were at the highest August numbers since 2006.
U.S. housing activity is steady and improving, LaNeve said on the call, and strong pickup sales are yet another indicator of that improvement. “Texas and some of the oil belt states, like Louisiana, seem to have at least assimilated that steady state that we are at now. But we felt like we had great pickup demand start to finish really July and August,” he said. “It’s a high volume market, a lot of them are work trucks bought for personal use or work use, or work use exclusively.”
Looking forward, LaNeve said he doesn’t foresee anything that would “disrupt the business” for the back months of 2015.
