Half-Ton Pickup Trucks Are Selling Like Crazy: Who Is Winning?

It's no secret that half-ton pickup trucks are among the best-selling vehicles every year. Unfortunately, big pickup truck makers such as Ford, GM (Chevrolet and GMC) and Ram do not break out their half-ton sales from their monthly full-size truck sales reports. That means we never know what the sales ratio is between half tons, three-quarter tons and one tons. That is, unless we go to our Cars.com analytics team, which can do a pretty good job of getting close. We should note that because Toyota has only one full-size pickup, the half-ton Tundra, it's quite easy to get separate monthly sales numbers for Toyota's two pickups, but since Nissan has two full-size pickups — the Titan and Titan XD — getting their exact monthly numbers is also more challenging.

Below we offer the market-share breakdown based on Cars.com data of half-ton pickups for 2016 and 2017 to give you an idea of how the half-ton market is shifting and changing. During that time period, the top-selling F-150 sold around 600,000 units, the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 flirted with 450,000 units and the Ram 1500 sold closer to 350,000. Those numbers are impressive and important because these are the vehicles that make the biggest profits.

We imagine these numbers will shift yet again for 2018, but not because the truckmakers aren't trying their hardest to sell as many vehicles as possible. As sales heat up for 2018, we'll see all the truckmakers offer better deals and more diverse, customer-focused products.

Cars.com graphics by Paul Dolan