Mr Lifted Vehicles

 I do not own FOX stock. Offloading SCA Group I expect FOX to sell off their SCA Group and retain the Tuscany upfit brand within the next 18 months, and here's why.  During the four years FOX has acquired the group, the auto market has experienced well-reported massive swings in their business during and immediately post-COVID.  With things returning to "normal" regarding inventory levels, the glaring problem with the new lifted truck market is now visible to everyone.  That is the obscurity problem; no one knows the market exists, even though new lifted trucks have existed for over a decade.  As I mentioned in a previous blog post , FOX's acquisition of the SCA Group was a lousy investment.  With the current aged new lifted truck inventory and dealer contraction with stocking new lifted trucks, FOX faces massive headwinds in the truck upfit segment.  It makes no sense for them to continue to operate multiple upfit brands that carry large overhead...

 I do not own FOX Factory stock. FOX Factory Holding Corp. held its Q4 Earnings call on February 22, 2024, at 4:30 PM. I am focusing on FOX CEO Mike Dennison's two comments during that call. “And then in AAG, again, fantastic growth over the last couple of years with the upfit business. I mean, it was 40% for two years back-to-back. And so that growth is fantastic in the upfit business. But this year, definitely slower just because we’re not getting the right chassis. We’re not getting enough chassis. And then you have dealer floor plan financing just really inhibiting dealers from taking more risk and putting the product on their lot. And so that’s having a pretty significant influence on us, and quite frankly from a margin standpoint as well.” The upfit growth was an anomaly driven by dealers' inventory situation post-COVID. If you recall, dealers could not keep trucks on their lots, so they contacted upfitters and snatched up any available chassis they had. The consume...

First, I own no stock in FOXF. I was a paid consultant by the company FOX hired to research the new lifted truck market before their 2017 partial acquisition of the truck upfitter Tuscany. They should have consulted with me before they acquired the Kinderhook upfitter company package purchase for $312M. Being a lifted upfitter for new trucks and having a bailment program with the manufacturers, they are shipped new trucks from the factory to install their packages. It is a fantastic privately owned business but horrible as a publicly traded company segment. The business ebbs and flows with the new lifted truck market. There are still privately held "branded" new lifted truck upfitter companies, i.e., Waldoch, American Luxury Coach, or Sherrod. A previous conversation with the owner of a branded truck upfitter company told me, "We adjust to conditions; if things are cranking, we are running at 100 percent; if things slow down, we may close a building an...

There's clearly an awareness problem with the lifted truck market, and especially with the New Lifted Truck market.  What's tied in with that, and is probably the most challenging thing to change or improve is the consumers perception of lifted trucks.  Ask anyone outside the auto market what comes to mind when you say lifted trucks, and they will probably answer "Big Foot" or something along the lines of a big monster truck.  I've already tested this out on many people, and that's the overall consensus.  In order for the lifted truck market, in particular the New Lifted Truck market to grow, we not only have to increase consumer awareness, but change the consumer's perception of these vehicles.          If you're a dealer that stocks lifted trucks, I'm going to show you proof of the current lifted truck situation.  As with our previous blog post focused on the New Lifted Truck market, this is encompassing of both. ...

For years I've been saying that the biggest problem with the New Lifted Truck market is the awareness problem.  Consumers are not aware that these products exist in the marketplace.  Now, I am going to show you the facts that support my position.  With Google being the number one search engine.  I am going to let them tell me what the numbers are.  Most people don't realize that Google will tell you exactly what the volume of searches are done per month over the course of a year for any word or phrase.  If consumers aren't searching Google for your company by name or product, they don't know you or your product exists!  I will add, it doesn't matter how long you've been in business! So lets see the numbers... Before we get into brands, lets just start with the lifted truck market as a whole.  Consumers do not differentiate between new or used lifted trucks.  That is due to the lack of awareness of there being new lifted trucks.  Co...

We are answering some of the questions consumers are asking about the new lifted truck market.  Before we get into the questions, there's a couple of terms that we will use.  Here's the terms, and the definition of them: Upfitter - A company that takes a new vehicle and mechanically/cosmetically alters it from it's original factory configuration.  The vehicles that they modify have not been titled, come from franchise dealers, or directly from the vehicle manufacturers production factory. Aftermarket Service Provider - A company that mechanically/cosmetically alters vehicles from their original factory configuration post titling/used. Bailment - A truck manufacture ships new vehicles directly from the factory to the upfitter.  This allows the upfitter to have ongoing physical inventory of trucks on hand for dealer orders. To the questions... What is a Rocky Ridge Package? Rocky Ridge is a vehicle upfitter that offers multiple product packages for new v...

New lifted trucks have been around for over 10 years.  The majority of them have been manufactured by authorized manufacture upfitters who for decades have been manufacturing conversion vans.  Due to the massive decline of the conversion van market, some of the established conversion van manufactures have switched focus to the conversion truck market. The Conversion Van Market Before I get into the new lifted truck market, lets briefly look at the conversion van market.  Again, all the current conversion truck upfitters started their companies focused on the conversion vans.  The conversion van market at one point had over 100 manufacturers producing conversion vans.  Now, there's less than 10 manufacturers in the market.  Which is pretty much consistent with the decline of the sales of conversion vans.  1993 was the last big year for conversion van sales with 192,000 sold that year.  Think about that number for a second, that's a lot of vans...