By Alex McCuaig

Positive fall

Vehicle dealerships caught up after high summer sales

Nov 19, 2020 | 5:03 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – It’s been an odd year for those selling cars, trucks and travel trailers as the pandemic came near the peak of dealerships’ sales period. But those fears of a pandemic-caused slowdown in the industry quickly turned around when the opposite effect was realized.

Stewart Scheuerman, Holiday RV general manager, says sales started to pick up in May for travel trailers and that trend is continuing.

“This fall is quite positive,” said Scheuerman. “Any advice to the consumer would be that if you see something you like right now, I would tell you to move forward on it. We don’t know what the spring brings but we know we have a lot of people looking.”

Scheuerman says inventory was drawn down this year and, “if you go out on our lot, you’re going to see a lot of empty space. But there are a lot of RVs on order and they’re coming.”

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But finding a used pickup truck to pull a travel trailer might be difficult, says Brandon Sanchioni, general manager of Medicine Hat Nissan.

“There is a huge demand for the pre-owned truck market right now. A lot of trucks are getting sent down south so the American buyers are paying more money than I’ve seen them pay – and I’ve been in this industry for quite a while.”

While used truck sales are on fire, the whole used vehicle market is hot, said Sanchioni.

“Auction levels have never been higher for what people are paying for used cars and that affects the market in general,” he said.

That, in turn, has seen more people seeing higher trade-in values at dealerships with new vehicle buyers getting better prices to put towards a new car purchase.

Something which has seen high sales on the new vehicle side, says Sanchioni, with his dealership doubling its sales.

Sanchioni says inventory at his dealership has remained steady and the industry as a whole has mostly caught up after COVID-related shutdowns affect production.