Big pickups always cast long shadows. But they loom especially large these days as growing truck sales suggest increasing grass-roots confidence in the economy.
Sales of full-size pickups – which plummeted three years ago in the depths of the recession – were up 10.9 percent in the U.S. through July, or by nearly 100,000 trucks.
“A paint contractor can’t run his business out of the back of a car,” said Pat Lobb, who owns Pat Lobb Toyota and Scion of McKinney, Texas.
The recent low point for pickups came in 2009, when sales fell nearly 50 percent in the U.S., to 1.1 million.
They have risen steadily since then and are on pace to hit 1.7 million this year – a 54 percent increase over three years.