Ford released July sales figures earlier today and while the overall results were a bit weaker than expected, sales trends for its F-Series trucks remained healthy. Sales of pickup trucks (specifically at Ford) are often a sign of strength or weakness in the small business and construction sectors, and based on these numbers from Ford, the small business sector still looks strong. Ford reported sales of 70,949 F-Series trucks, which marks the strongest July sales total since 2005 and the fourth strongest July since 1996. Another thing to keep in mind regarding July’s sales totals is that the company mentioned in its call that a fire at one of its supplier plants actually hampered sales.

Keep in mind that the above sales totals are unadjusted so they don’t take the number of selling days, which are generally auto industry parlance for days in a month that aren’t Sundays or a national holiday, into account. So while selling days can vary from month to month (in July 2017 there were 25 compared to 24 this year), looking at YTD sales totals provides a more apples to apples comparison. To that end, the chart below shows YTD sales totals for F-Series trucks through July for every year since 1996. Through 7/31 of this year, total sales of F-Series trucks were 522,087.That’s the highest YTD sales total since 2005 (535K) and the third highest sales total since 1996.