It's time to congratulate Ford Motor Co, since it's taking a much different approach to fleet sales than rival General Motors. While GM plans to slash sales to daily rental companies by 75,000 units this year and has plans for more cuts in 2017, the Blue Oval has held steady.
Ford's president of the Americas, Joe Hinrichs says the the automaker doesn't see an adjustment necessary in the daily rental. Through November, Ford's daily rental sales are at the same level they were a year ago: 11 percent of its total sales. Year to date, Ford's total fleet sales are up 2 percentage points to 30 percent of sales, thanks to increases on the commercial and government side. Ford's fleet sales, especially those to daily rental companies, were front-loaded in the first half of 2016 but began to drop significantly as summer turned to fall. Fleet sales tumbled 21 percent in September and also fell in October and November.
GM hopes relying less on fleet sales will pay dividends during the next economic downturn. Ford, meanwhile, took similar actions coming out of the recession under then-CEO Alan Mulally, cutting daily rental units from roughly 444,000 in 2006 to around 260,000 so far this year.