Picking Up

As the U.S. economy turns out greater and greater mountains of goods, the demand grows for trucks to haul them.

By the end of 1968, truck manufacturers will produce a record 1,803,000 trucks and Jeeplike vehicles. Understandably, they are delighted about the present -- a year of sales in excess of $4 billion--and see an even brighter future ahead. Said Ford President Semon Knudsen at the American Trucking Associations' convention last week: "We expect the total truck market to pass a 2,000,000 annual rate in the early 1970s and to reach 2,250,000 by 1975."

Knudsen has good reason to gloat. For the first time since 1935, Ford trucks are expected to outsell the longtime leader, Chevrolet. By Nov. 10, Ford had sold 562,000 trucks, against Chevrolet's 548,000; it expects to reach an alltime record of 650,000 by Jan. 1. Yet Chevrolet should not feel too bad: its truck sales are expected to increase by 11% over last year, to 640,000.

More to Divide. The No. 1 producer of heavy-duty trucks, International Harvester, is likely to retain its third place in total volume (1967 sales: 167,000 units), ahead of Dodge (141,000), Kaiser Jeep (116,000), CMC (114,000), White Truck (24,000), Mack (16,000) and FWD (1,200). These nine manufacturers accounted for almost all of the 1,500,000 trucks sold in the U.S. last year, dividing a $3.6 billion market among themselves.

This year, there will be even more money to be divvied around, since makers of both light-panel and pickup trucks (55% of the 16 million on the road) and of the vastly more expensive behemoths of the highways will benefit from better sales. Trucking companies are pressing manufacturers for ever larger, more efficient, maintenance-free trucks and are willing to pay a higher initial cost to keep upkeep down. Last year, some 100,000 of the over-13-ton class were sold, mostly by Harvester, White Truck, Mack and CMC. The demand is such that their number is expected to triple by 1980.

More and more of the heavier trucks are diesel-powered. At White Truck, for example, more than 80% of this year's production had diesel engines, compared with only 55% in 1960. Meanwhile, Ford, General Motors and International Harvester are working on turbine-powered trucks that would be feasible on turnpikes. The turbine consumes fuel completely and quietly, producing a low noise level and nontoxic exhaust. But since its high fuel consumption makes the turbine-truck economical only at full throttle, the rigs would have to drop the trailers at terminals just off the expressway. From those terminals, conventional trucks could haul the goods through stop-and-go local traffic.

What makes truck manufacturers feel best of all is the resurgence of the good old pickup. "This year Mama's interested in pickup trucks," says Chevrolet's new truck-sales manager, O. H. Henry. "They have become a kind of second car." Altogether, some 100,000 new pickups will be sold in 1968 as "campers," which are $3,000 to $4,000 vehicles that have been upgraded to $5,000 and more to include extras.

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