GM Leaves the Medium-Duty Market
Last June, I had the opportunity to test drive all the new vehicles being offered for 2008 by General Motors Fleet and Commercial Division. Judging by the presence of at least a dozen Kodiaks and Topkicks at the fleet preview event, you never could have guessed that GM would announce, less than a year later, that it planned to sell off its medium-duty truck operations to competitor Navistar, the parent company of International Truck & Engine.
Apparently, GM is using logic similar to that used by Ford when it sold its medium-duty truck business to Freightliner LLC a few years back. Ford needed cash to acquire Volvo cars; GM wants to concentrate on its passenger car and light truck businesses. All well and good, but over the past few years Ford has been inching its way back into the relatively strong medium-duty truck market; I wonder if GM will someday regret this move and follow Ford back into the arena.
And what will this mean to truck buyers who deal with International? Will International’s CityStar, built in a joint venture with Ford, be sold alongside the newly-badged International Topkick? Will the new trucks run on Isuzu or International engines?
Apparently, this move makes good business sense to GM, but in the long run, it could hurt fleets, by taking away a few more product choices.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Just a correction - Ford actually sold their heavy duty, not medium duty, business to Freightliner. Those trucks became the Sterling brand. The Ford F-series medium duty lineup was not affected.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Point well taken. Ford did indeed sell its heavy-duty lines to Freightliner. I was referring to the Ford line that is now the Class 5 and 6 Acterra, which we consider medium-duty. Thanks for your input.
January 18th, 2008 at 8:00 am
That’s good news for some. Now Dodge needs to step up and move ahead with Cummins, and do a medium duty lineThanks PR
January 18th, 2008 at 10:20 am
What this means for some Fleets such as ours will be to discontinue purchasing GM Medium Duty Trucks. The GM Medium Duty field service support structure left behind when Isuzu seperated has a lot to be desired. The field support pretty much went with Isuzu and left GM next to nill. My assumption would be to reduce labor cost in order to make the sale more attractive to International.
Isuzu is already building a relationship with Freightliner dealers for distributorship.
Funny how after divorces new alliances are built
January 26th, 2008 at 6:27 am
why would gm sell the medium duty line if its profittable.also could these hurt their image in selling its light duty trucks. plus with dodge entering the market wont these be a bad move