Posted by Mark Williams | October 17, 2014

Ever feel like you've seen this movie before? Us too. As truckmakers get more aggressive about winning back old customers and attracting new ones with new products, they are falling back on that favorite tool of all automakers — incentives.

It wasn't that long ago that analysts blamed huge incentive costs (the discounts you can get with the purchase of a new vehicle) for many of the truckmakers' problems. Many were maintaining their market share and sales volumes but were not as profitable as they needed to be. When the recession hit and people stopped buying pickup trucks, all the big players took a huge hit — Chrysler was sold to Fiat, GM was "purchased" by the U.S. government, and Ford went to outside investors for cash.

Well, here we go again.

According to The Detroit News, current incentives are as high was $9,500 for select half-ton trucks. The timing couldn't be better for smart buyers as the Ram 1500 underwent a significant overhaul in 2013; the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, GMC Sierra 1500 and Toyota Tundra were redesigned and upgraded in 2014; and the 2015 Ford F-150 just debuted in Texas (arriving in dealerships next month).

The Detroit News reports that there should be some great deals on pickups because manufacturers want to take advantage of Ford cutting back on production as it revamps its two F-150 plants to produce the all-new all-aluminum-bodied pickup. Ford has lost market share in the last few months, while Ram and GM have made gains.

As truck sales move into the fourth quarter, you can bet the competition will get even more contentious as all the truckmakers extend or modify their current finance and incentive packages, with some sounding too good to be true. According to The Detroit News, truck buyers can get $1,500 to $9,500 off the sticker price of certain 2014 models, depending on what you are trading in.

Although all the manufacturers say they want to be careful not to over-extend themselves this time, it's easy to draw comparisons between this economic climate and the one that brought Detroit automakers to their knees several years ago. To their benefit, average transaction prices continue to climb for all the truckmakers; unfortunately, so do incentives.

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