Continued Interest Seen in Used Trucks

The more prominently stable used-vehicle market was a result of the need to adjust fewer vehicles during the past week than any week of 2013, according to Ricky Beggs, editorial director for Black Book.

Changing less than 1,140 vehicles per day throughout the week resulted in none of the 10 car segment types increasing and an overall average segment dollar change of -$14. This is the only weekly time period in the past three months with no increasing car segments week over week, while the more consistent changes across all lines had the overall percentage change of -0.10 percent with the lowest percentage decline of -0.18 percent for the Entry Mid-size Cars followed by the -0.14 percent change for the Premium Sporty Cars. Dollar changes came in at -$13 and -$54 respectively for those two segments. Showing the consistency within the cars had six of the ten car segments declining by -$10 for the Upper Mid-size Cars down to -$1 for the Compact Cars.

"The stability carried over to the truck segments which had an overall change level of $0 and 0 percent," according to Beggs. "The fact that eight of the 14 segments increased this past week, following the previous two weeks where eight and nine segments had increased, shows a continuing pattern of interest within the trucks. The primary strength this past week came from the Compact SUVs and the Mid-size SUVs at +$54 and +$38. Taking a slightly different turn came within the Full-size Pickups at -$2 in the most recent week after the previous seven weeks of increases for this segment."

Gasoline prices only fell by ½ cent and now stand at the lowest price since the week of January 28, 2013. Even though prices have fallen for the past nine weeks we are still $0.23 higher than the first week of 2013. The better news is we are $0.39 less than the same time period one year ago.

"So far in 2013, the volume of new hybrid and electric-vehicle sales has increased by about 15,000 units over the year ago first quarter," Beggs noted. "This falls in line with the overall sales increases of the total market as the hybrid penetration of the total market is up only slightly from the previous year but still at just over 3 percent. If it were not for the level and trending of gas prices we feel there would be more interest in the hybrid and electric models both for new sales and used transactions."

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