Sales of full sized pickup trucks in the US are down 6% in 2021, in an overall market up 3%. With just over 2.18 million sales, this is the lowest annual volume for large pickups since 2014. However, it’s still the third-largest class in the United States, after compact crossovers and midsized crossovers. Its share declined 1.5 percentage points to 14.5%, from 16% in 2020. In Q4, large pickup truck sales were down 21%, along with the overall market.
The traditional class leader Ford F-Series had a weak second quarter of the year, which contributed to an 8% decline in deliveries for the year. However, America’s long-time best seller remains untouchable, still selling over 150,000 more units than the RAM Pickup (+1%) and nearly 200,000 more than the Chevrolet Silverado (-11%). The only blemish on the F-Series’ dominance would be that General Motors beats Ford for the second consecutive year in the class, as the Silverado together with its sibling GMC Sierra (-2%) outsell the F-Series by just over 50,000 deliveries. It will be very interesting to see how the electric versions of these haulers, planned to reach showrooms from 2022 onwards, will compete. Ford has the advantage of being the first, while RAM has the advantage of being able to learn from its rivals and to continue development a bit longer before their EV Pickup hits the market in 2024. Meanwhile, the Hummer EV Pickup had its first delivery at the end of 2021 and Rivian also has a handful of trucks already on the road, although this is a slightly smaller vehicle that we’ve classified as a midsized pickup truck.
The Toyota Tundra has just been redesigned for the first time in almost 15 years and promises to take a larger chunk of the full-sized pickup truck pie from its domestic rivals. But as deliveries of the new generation didn’t pick up steam in 2021 yet, the truck is the worst performer in the class with sales down by a quarter, making this the slowest year since 2009 for the Toyota. In Q4, Tundra deliveries were down by almost half. It still handily outsold the Nissan Titan, which was down by more than a third in the final quarter when stocks dried up, to end the year up just 4%.
US large pickup sales 2021
| Large Pickup segment | 2021 | 2020 | Change | 2021 Share | 2020 Share | 2021-Q4 | 2020-Q4 | Change | |
| 1 | Ford F-series | 726.004 | 787.422 | -8% | 33,3% | 33,7% | 191.173 | 198.388 | -4% |
| 2 | Ram Pickup | 569.388 | 563.676 | 1% | 26,1% | 24,1% | 134.616 | 161.266 | -17% |
| 3 | Chevrolet Silverado | 529.765 | 595.184 | -11% | 24,3% | 25,5% | 115.376 | 179.444 | -36% |
| 4 | GMC Sierra | 248.924 | 253.016 | -2% | 11,4% | 10,8% | 57.738 | 78.371 | -26% |
| 5 | Toyota Tundra | 81.959 | 109.203 | -25% | 3,8% | 4,7% | 16.946 | 32.389 | -48% |
| 6 | Nissan Titan | 27.406 | 26.439 | 4% | 1,3% | 1,1% | 4.634 | 7.036 | -34% |
| 7 | GMC Hummer EV Pickup | 1 | 0 | New | 0% | 0% | 1 | 0 | New |
| Segment total | 2.183.446 | 2.334.940 | -6% | 520.483 | 656.894 | -21% |
Source: Manufacturers.