Author Archive for Jason (Admin)
Jason Lancaster is the editor and founder of TundraHeadquarters.com. He has nearly a decade of dealership experience buying, selling, and maintaining vehicles, and much of that time was spent working at Ford and Toyota dealerships.
The Tundra’s 5 Year Ownership Costs Are Top Notch, But You Can Save More
The Toyota Tundra is arguably the best truck on the market. It’s combination of power, resale value, safety, reliability, and comfort place it at the top of the heap. In fact, the Tundra’s 5 year ownership cost figures are excellent. From KBB.com:
Five year ownership cost figures from KBB.com show the Tundra is a great deal.
Still, the Tundra isn’t exactly cheap, is it? When you breakdown the five year ownership cost figure, you find that a big chunk of it (about $17,000) is fuel.
Therefore, if you want to save money, one of the smartest things you can do is cut your fuel use. Here are some simple, sure-fire ways to reduce the amount of fuel you buy.
Bone-Stock Tundra Pulls 150,000 Pound Space Shuttle
Next time someone asks you what your Tundra can pull, tell them that a 2012 5.7L Tundra can pull a 150,000 pound space shuttle…without any modifications.
A bone-stock Toyota Tundra was used to tow the 150k pound space shuttle Endeavour across LA’s highway 405. Click for a larger image.
The Tundra pulled the 150k lbs space shuttle Endeavour across the Manchester Boulevard Bridge, which spans the 405 in L.A. …and it was bone-stock too.
TundraHeadquarters.com News!
When I founded TundraHeadquarters.com in March 2007, I never dreamed it would become this successful. Over the last year, TundraHeadquarters has had:
- 973,000+ unique visitors
- we’ve served just about 2.2 million pageviews
- we’ve generated about 250 posts in that time (give or take)
- we’ve had 1500+ comments in that time as well
While I’m excited about this performance, I know we can do more. That’s why I’m happy to officially announce two new members of our team – but more on that in a minute.
Insurance Data Says F150 Best, Nissan Titan Worst
The IIHS (Insurance Institue for Highway Safety) is an impartial source of vehicle safety info, such as crash test data, insurance loss rates, and more. Yesterday, the IIHS website shared some information about average loss rates by vehicle make and model, separately reporting loss rates on collisions, personal injury claims, etc. You can view the data for yourself here.
Is the F150 the safest truck on the road? Based on the below-average collision and property damage loss rates, it certainly could be.
However, if you want the long and short of it, the data boils down to this: The F150 has the lowest loss rates, and the Nissan Titan has absolutely the worst. The Tundra is about average.
Rural Dealerships A Big Sales Advantage for Ford, GM, and Chrysler-Fiat
According to this Automotive News story, GM classifies 1200 of their dealers as “rural.” While the definition of rural is likely a little loose, here’s what we know about GM’s dealership operations:
- GM has 4,400 dealerships across the USA
- 27% of these dealers are rural
- Toyota has about 1200 dealerships across the USA, and a very small portion of them are rural (our sources say less than 10%)
Assuming that each of these 1200 rural GM dealership can sell either Chevy or GMC trucks, and assuming that each of these dealership can sell a measly 5 trucks per month, GM can generate about 70,000 truck sales in rural areas that Toyota can’t hope to match.
In other words, GM has a big sales volume advantage because of their extensive dealership network in rural areas. Ford – and to a lesser degree Chrysler-Fiat – enjoy this sales volume advantage as well. Here’s what it means to Tundra sales figures.
