For years, Ford’s F-Series has been the best-selling truck in the U.S., with the Chevrolet Silverado coming in second, and Ram placing third. Usually, Ram ends up a distant third, too. This week, however, something different happened. When sales for the first quarter of 2019 were added up, the F-Series was still number one, but Ram was comfortably number two.
What’s possibly more surprising is that Silverado sales have dropped significantly. So far this year, Chevrolet has sold 114,313 Silverados, a near-16-point decrease compared to the same period last year. GMC Sierra sales are also down slightly, dropping 2.2 percent to 40,546. Ram’s truck sales, on the other hand, increased 15 percent last quarter to 120,026. None of those figures are remotely close to the 214,611 F-Series pickups that Ford has sold this year, but still.
Now, to be fair, if you add Silverado and Sierra sales together, General Motors as a whole sold more full-size pickup trucks than Ram did. Still, we don’t remember the last time the Silverado didn’t comfortably outsell Ram by itself. It’s also worth noting that Ram’s tally includes sales of the Ram 1500 Classic, the last-gen truck that FCA continues to sell alongside the new model. FCA doesn’t break out sales of the Classic from the new 2019 Ram 1500, our 2019 Truck of the Year. All three American truckmakers also lump in sales of their heavy-duty models with their half-ton counterparts.
Last quarter’s sales figures also add a little bit of nuance to the recent survey that showed 68 percent of people think pickup trucks are overpriced. Whether that statistic is representative of the entire U.S. or not, sales trends are headed in varying directions based on brand. Ram sales are way up, Silverado sales are way down, Sierra sales are down a little, and F-Series sales are almost flat. So even though full-size American pickup truck sales are down a little over 1 percent compared to the same period last year, that drop can be attributed almost entirely to fewer sales of the Silverado.