Ford Motor Company’s U.S. sales totaled 209,897 vehicles for August, a decline of 2.1 percent.  With us to explain is Ford Sales analyst, Erich Merkle.

Cut#1 “ I want to start out with by recognizing the devastation in Houston area from the Hurricane, all our of our thoughts and prayers go out to those impacted by this terrible storm.  Anything I say from a sales perspective seems a little bitinconsequential at this  point. Our sales were down, we were down about 2.1 percent, we were down 2 percent for the month.  There was an impact from Harvey on our sales, it’s hard to dimension and understand exactly the full impact of sales.  But there was some impact from Harvey on our sales and also on the industry as well.” :44sec.

Merkle says it will take time for sales to come back because of Hurricane Harvey.

Cut2 “We’re looking at, usually it takes a while, if you’re looking 60-days or maybe as much as 120 days out, a lot of it will depend on when things normalize in Houston and people  get back to their everyday lives. So, we’re hopeful and we’re optimistic that will happen as soon as possible and Houston can get back on the  right track again.” :23 sec.

Big Demand for F-Series Trucks resulted in a significant sales bump.

Cut#3 “We sold just over 77,000 F-Series pick ups, so we surpassed 70,000 mark again this  month.  That was a 15 percent increase in F-Series sales and we had a $1,300 increase in average transaction prices and that’s being driven by such strong demand for high trim level  or high series mix of Super Duty.”:24 sec.

Super Duty which included the high end, King Ranch, Lariate, and Platinum are driving sales for Ford, according to Merkle.

Cut#4 “They represented 53 percent of our retail sales for the month and their average transaction prices because of such strong demand for all these bells and whistles on the truck and high end trucks there average transaction prices were up $5,500, on a year-over-year  basis.”:20 sec.

Both Explorer and Expedition sales continued to see strong growth as the Millenials need more room.

Cut#5 “We saw Explorer retail sales were up 6.1 and Expedition retail was up 7.6 percent, so we continue  to see strong growth relative to the industry in these larger three-row vehicles, particularly as more and more millennials choose to have families and those families grow.”:20 sec.