Up over 102% from last June. And Sierra sold nearly 39,000, up more then 127%. While the Ford F-series was down 3.3% to 72,485. Chevy out sold Ford by over 37,000 full size pickups, and if you count the Sierra with the Silverado the number jumps to just under 150,000 or more then twice as many as Ford sold F-series.:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: And 4 time the number Dodge sold. (This stat is for Hoot;) )

Will the next generation Chevy full size be able to out sale the F-series?:ro)

I think Dodge will have them beat soon

If the prices are right, people will buy. Profit on pickups is enormous and GM is not taking a beating even at employee discounts and all the other rah ra. They still have a nice margin. Next years sales will depend upon which mfg does what. They have all the buying public "trained" on incentives, cash backs and all so I think these programs will continue in order to maintain sales.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: I think Dodge will have them beat soon GM sold nearly as many full size pickups in June as Dodge has sold all year, put that in your pipe;)
Dodge has sold about 200,000 YTD while GM sold 150,000 + 10,000 Avy`s in June:ro) (Just under 160,000 for the month)

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: GM sold nearly as many full size pickups in June as Dodge has sold all year, put that in your pipe;)
Dodge has sold about 200,000 YTD while GM sold 150,000 + 10,000 Avy`s in June:ro) (Just under 160,000 for the month)


I gave you that one Mike):h

It sure didn't look that way last week

I am worried about GM, the people who are in control, their goals vs reality and costs vs production. GM is losing on each sale. Not great for long term stability. With the health costs and retired employee costs already out of control, the UAW does not want to give an inch. No health care and no pensions may be worse than some reductions? GM has made so many indefensible decsions in the last three years that I sold my stock and am wondering what information is not being released about what is really expected to happen next. Does the emperor really have clothes? We'll see.


Net Revenues per Vehicle/Profits per Vehicle
Net Revenue Profits
Toyota $26,514 $1488
DCX $24,105 $ 186
Nissan $23,707 $1603
Honda $23,202 $1250
Ford $22,553 $ 620
GM $20,659 (-$2311)

Labour Hours per Vehicle
1998 2004 % change 2003 to 2004
DCX 46.81 35.85 4.2
Ford 36.76 36.98 4.2
GM 46.52 34.33 2.5
H 31.90 32.02 0.2
N 30.70 29.43 (-4.8)
T 30.25 27.90 5.5

"One of the new study's most revealing statistics had nothing to do with productivity. Toyota generated the highest revenues per vehicle last year, an average $26,514, once you stripped out incentives and other discounts. By comparison, General Motors' net was a meager $20,659 per vehicle.
"That's an alarming number," stressed Harbour, "all the more alarming because it hasn't changed much in seven years."
Compounding matters, Japanese profits per vehicle were significantly higher than Detroit, ranging from $1250 at Honda to $1603 for Nissan. Ford had the highest figure among the Big Three, at $620, while GM lost $2311 per vehicle in 2004."
----------------------
Health costs and paying 2 retirees for every 1 actual worker doesn't help, either.
As GM recovers from its worst quarterly loss in more than a decade, $1.1 billion, executives have targeted health care as a top opportunity for cost cutting. And as GM is the nation's largest private purchaser of health care, what it does is being watched closely and could have ramifications beyond its own 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependants.
"It begins to call into question whether employers can continue to be the backbone of our health care system," says Drew Altman, who heads the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan think tank that studies health care issues.
The cost of providing health care adds from $1,100 to $1,500 to the cost of each of the 4.65 million vehicles GM sold last year, according to various calculations. GM expects to spend at least $5.6 billion on health care this year, more than it spent on advertising last year.
"It's crystal clear that we need to achieve a significant reduction in our health care-cost disadvantage and do so promptly," GM CEO Rick Wagoner told shareholders at the company's annual meeting June 7 in Wilmington, Del.
But getting the union to agree to major changes in the middle of its contract could be difficult. Already, union members are balking at talk of trimming retiree benefits, and local union leaders are grumbling about the possibility of a strike if the company tries to force changes through; however, a mid-contract strike could be deemed illegal.
There is room for some negotiation: The contract includes provisions that allow GM to ask union members to sign on with cheaper plans, or to take on higher co-pays. But union leaders say they're unwilling to reopen the contract — something that would give the company greater latitude for cutting costs.
"To GM, health care is dollars and cents; to workers, it's the social contract that was defined over decades," says Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in labor issues. "That's not something easily unwound."
More costly than steel
That the Big Three are struggling with rising health care costs is hardly surprising. They have rich benefits, an older workforce and a mounting number of retirees.
COMPARING BENEFITS
How benefits for GM retirees under age 65 compare with those of a typical large firm:
General Motors
United Auto Workers White collar PPO Large firm
Monthly employee-paid premium
$0
$75
$187
Annual deductible $0 $0 $500
Out-of-pocket maximum $250 $1,300 $1,000
Office visit co-pay or co-insurance Full out of pocket
25%
$15/visit
Hospitalization and outpatient co-pay
$0
$0
$15/visit
Generic retail prescription drug
$5
$5
$20
Source: Bernstein Research Call
---------------------
GM Chief Financial Officer John Devine said that the company is considering withdrawing funds from the $20 billion Voluntary Employee's Beneficiary Association fund under an option that allows the company to draw from the fund an amount equal to its health care benefits costs for last year and to date this year. Under the option, GM could withdraw as much as $6 billion from the fund, a sum that the company is not required to repay. Lance Wallach, an accountant who specializes in VEBA funds, said that the withdrawal "could resonate through the auto industry" if GM proceeds with it (USA Today, 4/20). United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger earlier this month said that the union will not reopen a contract with GM to reduce the automaker's rising health care costs but that UAW will work with the company to reduce costs within the confines of the existing agreement. Gettelfinger, who along with other UAW officials met with GM executives at an annual meeting, said he has not been asked to reopen the contract, which expires in 2007 (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 4/15).





"It is a well-known fact that the U.S. automobile industry spends more per car on health care than on steel," says Lee Iacocca, the retired chairman of Chrysler who in the early 1990s advocated a national health care program as a solution. "This problem is not going to go away on its own."
Automakers are not the only employers with health cost problems.
During the past six years, employers large and small faced double-digit inflation in health insurance premiums, which have risen at several times the rates of inflation and wage growth.
Many employers have passed along part of the rising costs to workers: increasing the amount workers pay toward premiums; setting higher annual deductibles; and boosting the amounts they pay to see a doctor, be admitted to the hospital or fill a prescription.
Largely, the auto industry has not done that. GM's plan, for example, favors traditional insurance over HMOs, offering it for free while requiring a monthly payment toward the HMO. Yet, tightly controlled managed-care plans were credited in the 1990s with a sharp slowing of medical inflation and lower out-of-pocket costs for workers.
And while white-collar workers at GM, who represent 26% of the active workforce, pay about 27% of their health care costs, unionized workers pay about 7%. Because the coverage is mainly free, that 7% comes from charges for doctor-office visits and co-payments on drugs. Outside the auto industry, single employees pay an average of 18% of the cost of their premiums, and families pay 22%, according to research by benefit firm Towers Perrin. Many also pay deductibles, co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs on top of that.
"Unions and the companies failed to take advantage of most of the cost-saving mechanisms of the 1980s and 1990s," says Brian Johnson, senior research analyst with Sanford Bernstein.
Even if GM were to change its generous benefits and make them more like the American corporate norm, the savings would be a one-time thing, says Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Those savings would be quickly eaten up by the rising costs of medical care.
Nichols says the answer for GM and all of those who buy health care is complicated. It requires finding better ways to measure and monitor quality care, increased efforts to pay a premium to medical providers who perform well — and less to those who don't — and information technology to help track all of those efforts.
"The big lesson here is that GM alone can't tame the health care system," Nichols says. "We need to create a culture of value where (medical) people do the right thing the first time and no more."
UAW under pressure
Pressure is on the United Auto Workers union to accept concessions on health care, such as asking workers to pay a portion of their premium.
The union has staunchly rejected such calls in the past, but seems willing to give at least a little now that GM's problems appear to have reached crisis level.
"We are willing to work with GM to find mutually agreeable ways to reduce costs in health care and other areas," said UAW Vice President Richard Shoemaker in a statement earlier this month. During the 2003 negotiations, the union settled for smaller wage increases and some plant closings in exchange for a deal that left health benefits largely untouched. They may not be able to hold the line again.
"At some point, either these companies will have to break with retirees and shift higher costs to workers, or they will go belly up," says Uwe Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton University. "Everyone else has done it. In fairness, it's not clear why an autoworker should have a better deal than someone who makes washing machines."
Nationally, six years of double-digit health-premium inflation has taken its toll, with workers in companies that offer medical benefits bearing an increasing amount of out-of-pocket costs, high enough to cause some families financial distress. More than 45 million Americans, many of them employed, don't have health insurance.
As employers look for ways to contain cost growth, many are embracing a new philosophy, one that makes employees increasingly responsible for health and retirement costs. In theory, employers say, workers will use medical care more judiciously and slow medical inflation if they have to pay more of it themselves.
Others have said asking workers to pay a few hundred or a few thousand dollars more each year won't tackle the larger issues of rising hospital and drug costs, new treatments and an aging population that has pushed national spending on health care to $1.8 trillion annually. Government intervention, in the form of a national health program, is supported by unions but adamantly opposed by many business and political leaders.
Chances slim for rapid change
The industry is not pushing for national health care this time around. Instead, GM's Wagoner has called for the government to create a catastrophic insurance pool that would help employers cover big expenses that go beyond the norm.
Politically, major reform is not in the cards anytime soon.
Current proposals from the administration and in Congress are aimed at helping the uninsured purchase health care through tax credits and would allow small businesses to band together to purchase insurance. The administration also backs efforts to encourage workers to save money for health costs through tax-free health savings accounts. Changing the legal system to limit malpractice awards is touted as a solution, although debate rages over whether such reform would do much to control rising health care spending. None of those solutions is likely to help automakers significantly reduce the amount they spend on health care.
Automakers aren't the only employers facing fights over changes to health care benefits.
In the past two years, proposed changes to health benefits have led to strikes of unionized grocery workers in California and of garbage haulers in Chicago, and the first nationwide strike by General Electric workers since 1969. The issue is likely to remain contentious, particularly in industries that pit lower-wage, lower-priced upstarts against established unionized firms.
"Rarely does the consumer chose the product offering better wages for citizens, vs. the lower-priced offering," analyst Johnson wrote in a May 20 research note.
But GM and other U.S. automakers are troubled by more than health costs: Japanese automakers are more innovative. South Korean manufacturers offer less-expensive products. Sales of SUVs have helped prop up profits of U.S. companies in recent years, but high gas prices are putting a damper on customer enthusiasm.
"GM has focused on health care as if this were the only thing standing between them and major success," says Shaiken at Berkeley. "That is a distortion, which is not to say health costs are unimportant. But it's neither the root of their problem or the solution alone to what ails them."

I find it very difficult to believe that GM is losing $2,300 on every vehicle it sells.

I find it very difficult to believe that GM is losing $2,300 on every vehicle it sells.

That`s because they aren't! Plain and simple! Some of these so called stats are a complete joke. According to the above post, GM took a loss of almost 1.3 billion dollars in June alone:rolleyes: Yea, right!:rolleyes: Yet its stock is up something like 25% since its low in April. GM is doing fine dispite how the media trys to spin it. Sure they would like to be in much better shape, but they are making a subtantial amount of money on nearly everything they sale. Ford was giving bigger rebates then GM in June, yet they were up just 0.7% compared to GM being up 41%

Toyota, Nissan, and Honda will one day be in the same boat as the American three! But the retirement and helth care hasn't had time to catch up to them because they havn't been in the US market for nearly as long. The Japan three are giving pretty much the same type of deal when it comes to retirement and health care to there workers as the American three are.

That`s because they aren't! Plain and simple! Some of these so called stats are a complete joke. According to the above post, GM took a loss of almost 1.3 billion dollars in June alone:rolleyes: Yea, right!:rolleyes: Yet its stock is up something like 25% since its low in April. GM is doing fine dispite how the media trys to spin it. Sure they would like to be in much better shape, but they are making a subtantial amount of money on nearly everything they sale. Ford was giving bigger rebates then GM in June, yet they were up just 0.7% compared to GM being up 41%

Toyota, Nissan, and Honda will one day be in the same boat as the American three! But the retirement and helth care hasn't had time to catch up to them because they havn't been in the US market for nearly as long. The Japan three are giving pretty much the same type of deal when it comes to retirement and health care to there workers as the American three are.

Toyota is acting like it could deep six GM tommorrow if it chose to do so. Now that's pretty bold.

Up over 102% from last June. And Sierra sold nearly 39,000, up more then 127%. While the Ford F-series was down 3.3% to 72,485. Chevy out sold Ford by over 37,000 full size pickups, and if you count the Sierra with the Silverado the number jumps to just under 150,000 or more then twice as many as Ford sold F-series.:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: And 4 time the number Dodge sold. (This stat is for Hoot;) )

Will the next generation Chevy full size be able to out sale the F-series?:ro)

The sales statistics are interesting... any idea how many Chevy/GMC's were sold with DURAMAX engines?

Anyone out there have Duramax sales statistics by year from 2001 to present? It would be nice to know just how many TOTAL Duramax engines are out there.
:confused:


.

i can give u a general estimate, we are at engine # 665,000 thats a lil low ball i think, that also includes small block and long block partials, H1 alpha motors, kodiak/topkick, and workhorse chasis motor sales, along with in house audit motors and such that never see the light of day

My family has never owned more than two non-GM trucks, and those did not compare to the Chevy/GMC prducts. I will own more GM trucks in the future, if they are around. Blind loyality is a dangerous thing.

With just the health care cost plus the pension costs plus the wages to produce a unit, you can see where the $2300 loss can easily come from. In the end, it does not matter how many units are produced, if the cost to produce them is more than the profit. Not liking bad news is fine. But, I would rather know now than later. I surely hope some comprimises and changes will be forthcoming. It would be bad for everyone if GM continues down this path. I cannot imagine owning another truck. Once you have established wages, and benefits, though, it is hard to reduce or take them back.

Saying something is spin or not true because you do not want it to be so is not rational stance. GM released the numbers. They would not give incentives, rebates or "deals" if they did not have to. Any rebates on Bently, Ferrari, Rolls? How many companies, like Enron, have said everything was fine and dandy....then the employees got the surprise of their life? Who has more motive to spin.. a company in trouble or automotive press members? Some degree of skepticism and curiosity is a good safeguard.

On the other hand, it seems like most young people, today, are intersted in video games, rap music, being entitled to every amenity and convenience without any work or study. No sacrifice, just rewards. Nice, but only a handful of lucky get that deal. While American kids are distracted and unmotivated to get an education, their Eurpean and Asian counterparts are going to school six days a week, and it shows. So, we may have some $1 per hour workers, after all.

Companies are in business to make money. They have to make stock holders happy. No stock holders or no sales is not great. Did you see or go to the GM stock holders meeting this year? Stockholders were demanding for huge cuts to incomes of both current and former employees. General Motors owes so much money to its employees through their pension and health funds that it is almost impossible for this company to ever make a profit again. Stockholders have found this out and are bailing or have lost so much they are hanging on and demanding change. For Honda, every vehicle sold costs the company $107 in pension and health payments. But for General Motors, the cost is $1,360. You can just imagine how high the same costs are for a Chinese manufacturer. How can General Motors be competitive there? How can this company remain in business?

You have to read many sources, and think for yourself and ask what, why and when. You may have some other sources that you can post that will convince me that the General has no future worries. This is just information that seems to be in short supply, though. Stockholders seem to have a too-firm grasp on the reality of the situation.
Simple math tells you that if costs to produce a unit rise (wages, health care, retirement, etc.), then you must increase productivity and sales. That is not happening as one worker must cover two non-workers costs, by producing three, not one unit.

GM has more than 460,000 hungry pension mouths to feed—that’s 2.5 retirees per employee. That has created a billion-dollar hole and is forcing GM to direct valuable resources from the company kitty to the pension funds. For each vehicle sold in model year 2004, $900 went into these funds.

Standard and Poor would not cut your stock rating if you were doing good, would they? I do not think S&P are in the spin business. They would not risk their credibility on rumors or wishes.

Standard & Poor's cuts GM, Ford to junk status
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Standard & Poor's cut General Motors' and Ford Motor Co.'s debt ratings to junk status today in a move that will reduce the automakers' avenues for raising funds as they struggle with global competition and rising health care costs.
The cuts could cause the automakers' borrowing costs to rise.
Investors have dreaded a GM cut to junk for fear it may cause turmoil in both the high-grade and junk markets. Investment funds ineligible to hold junk bonds could be forced to sell billions of dollars of GM debt.
Standard & Poor's cut GM's long-term credit ratings by two notches to "BB," the second highest junk rating. The outlook on the new rating is negative.
GM has about $300 billion of outstanding long-term debt including secured notes.
The rating agency cut Ford's credit ratings one notch to "BB+," the highest junk rating.
------------------------------------
Poke around on GM insidenews.com and Autonews.com and detroitnews.com
-----------------------------------
If Chrysler imports from China, with no health care costs or retirement plans, do you think GM might have to also, just to compete? That worries me. The UAW president says that US workers can compete in the areas of productivity, quality and innovation", but did not mention wages.
DaimlerChrysler considers exporting Chryslers from China
By Christine Tierney / The Detroit News
Chinese Chrysler
DaimlerChrysler is in talks to build Chryslers in China for export. Would you buy a Chrysler from China?
DaimlerChrysler AG's top China strategist triggered an uproar Thursday when he said the automaker was exploring the possibility of making vehicles in China for export, including a subcompact for the Chrysler Group's U.S. lineup.
But in a confusing twist, Chrysler denied that the company was studying plans to make a small car in China for sale in the United States.
The subject is politically fraught, with U.S. automakers increasing purchases of low-cost components made in China but hesitant to bring Chinese-built vehicles to the United States, where they have excess car-making capacity.
But now that U.S. automakers are struggling financially, they are under increasing pressure to become more competitive by shifting production to China, where wages can run as low as $1 an hour, and other low-cost regions.
General Motors Corp. produces the engine for its Equinox minivan in China, but it sells its Chinese-made vehicles in China. Honda Motor Co. is building cars in China for export to Europe. But so far, the only publicly announced plan to bring Chinese cars to the U.S. market is automotive entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin's project to import cars built by China's Chery Automobile Co. starting in 2007.
At the Shanghai auto show, DaimlerChrysler's board member responsible for its China activities, Ruediger Grube, told reporters the automaker was studying plans to build a small car in China -- smaller than the Dodge Neon -- for the Chrysler Group.
"We would like to establish here in China an export joint venture for Chrysler products," Grube told Reuters. "Today, we are not talking about Europe. We are talking about North America."
Grube declined to estimate the probability that the plan to make compact cars would go ahead.
"Exploring the idea and actually doing it are worlds apart," he said. "We are being very cautious on this because we see how quickly market conditions can change, in China as well."
Asked about a potential political backlash in the United States, Grube said: "We're not talking about (making) current products. We are talking about a totally new segment."

His remarks appeared to take Chrysler officials in Auburn Hills by surprise.
"We are not looking at a B-segment car that would be built in China and shipped to the United States for the Chrysler Group," Chrysler spokesman Jason Vines said.
Grube's remarks provoked a sharp reaction from the United Auto Workers union. "DaimlerChrysler's unex pectedly candid statement about the so-called advantage of low labor costs in China reveals worlds about what is wrong with today's global economy," said UAW President Ron Gettelfin ger.
"U.S. autoworkers are prepared to compete with workers anywhere in the world based on productivity, quality and innovation. But it's just plain wrong -- for workers in China as well as the United States -- to force workers to compete against each other based on who can do a job for the lowest possible wage," Gettelfinger said.
Thursday's flap, which revealed the occasional disconnect between the automaker's Stuttgart and Auburn Hills headquarters, was also awkward because of the timing. The Bush administration, concerned about China's rising trade surplus with the United States, is starting to take a harder look at China's commercial practices.
But the administration also signaled recently that Detroit's auto makers need to become more competitive to solve their problems. DaimlerChrysler executives previously said that they were exploring the possibility of building vehicles in China, not only for the large local market but also eventually for export, taking advantage of low costs and wages.
"Down the road, anyone who would build there would think of exporting," Vines said.
DaimlerChrysler now builds several thousand Jeep vehicles in China and plans to assemble Mercedes C- and E-Class sedans in the fall with longtime local partner Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. Ltd. But the Stuttgart, Germany-based automaker has been cautious about the Chinese market and its invest ment plans -- $1.6 billion over three to five years -- is modest compared with the sums earmarked by its global rivals.
Beijing Automotive's more recent venture partnership with Hyundai Motor Co. has grown much faster than its activities with DaimlerChrysler.
In 2003, relations among the three companies became strained when South Korea's Hyundai said Daimler Chrysler's plan to build Mercedes cars with Beijing Automotive breached its own exclusive agree ment with the Chinese automaker. Last year, DaimlerChrysler shed its 10 percent stake in Hyundai, after deciding to bail out out of Mitsubishi Motors Corp., its ailing Japanese part ner.
Left with a small presence in Asia, the Stuttgart, Germany-based auto maker sharpened its focus on China. Last year, it sold 11,500 vehicles in Chi na, the world's third-largest vehicle market.
As DaimlerChrysler aims to expand its business in China, "we are al so looking at other partners," besides Beijing Automotive, Vines said. DaimlerChrysler has a framework accord to produce trucks with Beiqi Foton Motor Corp. Ltd., whose big gest shareholder is Beijing Automo tive. It also produces vans with Fujian Motor Industry Group.
----------------
Something has to change and no one wants to be the one who gives in.

i can give u a general estimate, we are at engine # 665,000 thats a lil low ball i think, that also includes small block and long block partials, H1 alpha motors, kodiak/topkick, and workhorse chasis motor sales, along with in house audit motors and such that never see the light of day

:Handshake

Thanks for the info koolz... it's nice to know that there are a reasonably large number of Duramax's out there.
:thankyou2

.

Just to show comparison I believe Navistar was building that many PSD's every year... for years.

TxDoc, why don't you come out and say what you want to say? You did not mention the 4 BILLION GM paid to get out of the Fiat deal plus the 2 BILLION they had in it to start with..............talk about bad management!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just to show comparison I believe Navistar was building that many PSD's every year... for years.

Yeah, and don't forget that engine is used in school busses, delivery Vans ( UPS etc. ) and many other applications. it is not exclusive to Ford!! They just fCensoredup the ones they want, and Navistar keeps the rest!!:lol:

Take care.

Will

TxDoc, why don't you come out and say what you want to say? You did not mention the 4 BILLION GM paid to get out of the Fiat deal plus the 2 BILLION they had in it to start with..............talk about bad management!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And before any of the honest working people at GM get laid off, they should cut out all these severly over paid over bonused bean counting executives.... Including these rupture brained morons who botched that deal!!

Take care,

Will

Yeah, and don't forget that engine is used in school busses, delivery Vans ( UPS etc. ) and many other applications. it is not exclusive to Ford!!



And why is that?

And why is that?

Well depending on how you read the statement , people may assume that Ford sells 200,000 powerstrokes each year!! Not Likely!!

TxDoc; There is a huge diffence between needing to sale at a lower price, and loseing money! I liked how you posted old news to make your point, thing is, old news don't mean squat! GM is no longer junk status.

Well depending on how you read the statement , people may assume that Ford sells 200,000 powerstrokes each year!! Not Likely!!
A few years back Ford was selling 200,000 give or take 25,000 each year. But since the Duramax came out, and the Cummins became quite, Ford`s share has went from about 75-80 percent, to about 40-43 percent of light truck diesels. Which is 150,000-160,000 per year at best. GM is the one that made out like a fat cat. Going from about 2% up to about 30-32%. While Dodge went from about 22% up to about 26-27%

GM wants us to make almost 200k for the 2005 fiscal year, in the 2004 fiscal year we made about 135k and the year before that it was 120k(ish) so each year our demands get higher and higher which is always a good thing

:exactly: GM wants us to make almost 200k for the 2005 fiscal year, in the 2004 fiscal year we made about 135k and the year before that it was 120k(ish) so each year our demands get higher and higher which is always a good thing

HDMAX, yep, it's all a hoax. Numbers don't lie. Maybe not quite as bad as they claim but it's the trend that's important. I hear my employees saying stuff like this when our business is struggling. Ya, we make it back and survive, but not by hanging on to the status quo. Hard real changes must be made in a timely fashion or you'll end up unemployed.

McDonalds sold more hamburgers than anyone else last year, does that mean they make the world's best hamburgers?

Things would most likely be a bit different if Ford and Navistsar hit a major home run.

GM has done well. I hope they can improve the Dmax instead of ruining it as the penny pinchers strike.

Working in the health care business I can say that the costs in this country are the highest I have ever seen anywhere - and I have worked and lived in a lot of different countries.
As long its possible (and allowed) to sell a simple cream to treat agne for more than 100 bucks (at Walmart after insurance discount, that was a prescribtion drug) which costs 5 bucks somewhere else nothing will change. Prices for anything medical are outrageous. People trying to sell cheaper via the Internet with stores in Canada are stopped (or at least treatend) even by the Busch administration....but thats all politics and far far off topic - please accept my apologies....
:offtopic: :offtopic: :offtopic: :offtopic: :offtopic:

Numbers, numbers, numbers... It's all a game of numbers. In the early '90s, I worked for a rather large east coast John Deere dealer. The owner's wife "owned" the property the dealership occupied and rented the 4 million dollar complex for $1.00 (one) dollar per year. The owners wife then claimed all mortage payments for that year over that $1.00 as a loss. She was just taking her husband's income to cover the mortage payments. It was just a way to dodge taxes or as some like to say "work the books".

We may be missing the big picture... GM may lose $2300. per truck, but maybe making $700. or $1200. per another model times "x" amount of units produced. GM will cook the books to read what they want them to read. They may claim a loss this year and tell the unions "hey, were losing money and therefore can't continue to offer you bla bla health insurance".

It's all a big game.

McDonalds sold more hamburgers than anyone else last year, does that mean they make the world's best hamburgers?

Yes. :exactly: :)

Hey,

Almost ( cant remember the exact number, just shy of 23,000. ) 23,000 Chev & GMC's were sold up Here in June, NO EMPLOYEE DISCOUNTS though, just the usual pricing & haggling!!

Take care,

Will

I heard that if they are not already doing so, Ford and Dodge will soon be giving customers the employee discount as well. Not sure if this is true or not.

I heard that if they are not already doing so, Ford and Dodge will soon be giving customers the employee discount as well. Not sure if this is true or not.

Done deal. The 'Ford Family Plan" and Chryslers "Employee Pricing Plus" both started on the 6th.

Follow the leader.