Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Beggs on the Used Car Market, with data and insights from Ricky Beggs and Black Book. From all of the reports and seeing the action first hand we know how active most dealers and remarketers have been this past week. The comments within the Black Book survey personnel summary reports this past week as compared to the prior week took on a different tone and perception of the market. I thought the number of comments referencing a “steady”, a “good” and a “solid” market was not the normal mid-October tone. Sure there was still the occasional “plenty of no sales” and the “2014s were a tough sale” type comments but maybe the reason for the change in perception overall was actually due to the variance from prior weeks in the level of change of the cars versus the truck segments.

Overall the cars average segment change of -$64 was the lowest level of decline since the -$60 change for the week ending August 15, eight weeks ago. The -$64 change almost mirrored the -$65 change of one year ago. And in keeping with the year ago levels of change, the Entry Sporty Cars and the Entry Level Cars changing by -$36 and -$40 respectively were the lowest declining segments within the cars for the week this year, as well as one year ago.

There was also some consistency week over week as four car segments had either a $2 or $1 change level as the Entry Mid-size Cars and the Luxury Level Cars changed the slightly larger $2 amount and the Near Luxury Cars and the Full-size Cars had just the $1 change. Each of these four with little weekly difference was better or lower than the overall segment change within the cars.

Where the cars had a lower week over week declining level the trucks, at still less change than the cars, showed an increase level of change overall increasing from a -$14 and -$21 average change two and three weeks ago to -$36 this past week.

The Full-size Pickups and both of the Full-size Van configurations continued their increasing levels of change, while the Full-size SUVs, Full-size Crossovers and the Luxury Level SUVs were in the -$100 plus levels of change for the week.

And speaking of change, the price of gas declined by $.05 week over week to $3.30 per gallon. This is $.07 below year ago levels, and the lowest level since the week of February 3. 2014, yet still $.11 above the low point of the past year of $3.19 for the week of November 11, 2013. And as I tweeted earlier last week, I actually paid below $3.00 for the first time in the past year. If I had slipped over to our neighboring states to the east or the west, it would have probably been another $.20 or so less.