Gas price drop gives Nissan, Ford, GM lift

DETROIT— Gas prices have hit a sweet spot for U.S.-based automakers. They’ve fallen enough to spur pickup truck sales, yet remain so high that newer small cars with good gas mileage are selling, too.

That made June a good month for General Motors and Ford, which have traditionally relied on truck sales and now have strong lineups of smaller, fuel-efficient models as well.

Franklin-based Nissan Motor Co. said sales rose 11.4 percent on strong demand for smaller vehicles. Sentra compact car sales rose nearly 31 percent, for instance.

Among other Asian car manufacturers, Toyota and Honda couldn’t take advantage, however. Their sales plummeted more than 20 percent each as they ran short of cars because of the ongoing problems from the March earthquake in Japan.

Industry analysts expect overall U.S. sales to rise 13.5 percent from last June, to around 1.1 million cars and trucks. Automakers were reporting June sales throughout the day on Friday.

GM said that cheaper gas lured more pickup truck buyers into showrooms.

In the Nashville area, average gas prices at the pump were $3.38 a gallon on Friday, down 20 cents a gallon from a month ago.

With prices like that, Chevrolet Silverado sales rose 5 percent and GMC Sierra sales up 8 percent compared with a year earlier nationally.

Sales of Ford’s F-Series pickups rose 7 percent, while Chrysler reported a 35-percent increase in Ram truck sales

“There is a certain portion of consumers who react to gas prices almost on a daily basis, and they decide what to buy based on those prices,” said Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insights for car pricing site TrueCar.com.

Even Nissan benefited on the pickup front. Sales of its Frontier small pickup rose 51 percent.

Even with sales rebounding, there is some concern about the strength of the recovery. Don Johnson, GM’s vice president of U.S. sales, said he expects total industry sales to be at the low a range of 13 million to 13.5 million vehicles.

J.D. Power and Associates lowered its full-year sales forecast from 13 million vehicles to 12.9 million.

Johnson blamed stubbornly high unemployment, and suggested that many Americans will motor along driving older cars.

The average car on the road now is 10.6 years old, according to the Polk research firm.

“Things aren’t quite as healthy in the current environment as expected earlier this year,” said Jeff Schuster, J.D. Power’s executive director of global forecasting.

Image is Everything – Secrets to Cleaning Car Fleets ...

A recent survey indicated that clean Taxi Cabs Fleets have higher tip rates and repeat customers. How do you wash a taxicab? You do them four at a time and you go up and over and up and over when you are drying them. If they have a little taxi cab sign, dry that last. But you do the rest of the car the way you do a regular car. The only difference is you are going to spray three, four, five, sometimes six cars at a time. Then another crewmember is going to follow behind you and do all the windows really well. You do a quick vacuum with a taxicab. Seriously, you do not want to be in that taxicab for more then a minute or a minute and a half. Now most taxicabs are usually scratched and they look like crap. This is something you are going to have to deal with. This is just the way they are going to look which is good for you because they are not expecting a perfect job. They just want them to look clean because they have their logo on them. Taxi companies are very low budget operations and low cost will get you the account. Some taxicabs are owned by independent contractors. You will need to charge more since the volume is not there. Staging areas at big airports are a good place to find lots of taxicabs.

Rent-A-Cars

Rent-a-cars these days are mostly small, tiny cars that get really good gas mileage. They are Toyota Tercels, Ford Contours and Dodge Neons and things like that. You can wash a Dodge Neon in your sleep in about three minutes. Really easy to clean, really, really easy and that is important. You want some accounts that are easy. Three dollars is fair for exteriors, five dollars for in and out is fine. It is important to have efficiency when washing rent-a-cars. No more than two minutes for vacuuming. You only want to clean the windows that are dirty. You do not want to clean all of the windows on a rent-a-car, just where you see fingerprints. You want to wipe off the dash really quick, wipe around the center console and use cleaner on the sticky stuff. Hit the inside windows that are dirty, wash the outside. You want to do them five, six at a time and you want to dry them off real fast, make sure the windows are clean and go to the next car. Rent-a-cars are really good money. You want to charge an extra two dollars for taking out carpet stains. Use some Folex cleaner or advanced carpet stain remover, some kind of a little carpet brush and a towel to wipe up whatever you precipitate at the top of the carpet after you have got it wet. The carpet remover should come off on the towel. There will always be trash in rent-a-cars, a lot of trash. You should have a bucket ready that you just put trash in and move it from car to car. Dump it before you leave. Usually rent-a-cars will have a Dempsey Dumpster around the back where you can dump all of your trash.

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