DE­TROIT-Af­ter years of sput­ter­ing, sales of big pick­ups kicked in­to over­drive last month. De­mand for full-size pick­ups jumped 16 per cent, help­ing make Au­gust the strongest month for US au­to sales in three years. Over­all au­to sales in­creased 20 per cent from a year ear­li­er to near­ly 1.3 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Au­to­da­ta corp. The ris­ing de­mand shows that busi­ness­es need to re­place ag­ing trucks and feel more con­fi­dent about the re­cov­ery in US hous­ing-a mar­ket where pick­ups are es­sen­tial for haul­ing equip­ment and crews.

"Busi­ness­es don't usu­al­ly go buy a fleet of trucks un­less they have good rea­son to be­lieve that busi­ness will be ramp­ing up," said Jesse Toprak, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket in­tel­li­gence for the True­Car.com au­to pric­ing ser­vice Ford, GM and Chrysler, the biggest mak­ers of full-size trucks, notched dou­ble-dig­it gains in over­all sales last month.

In pick­ups, Ford's F-Se­ries, the top-sell­ing ve­hi­cle in Amer­i­ca, saw a 19 per cent sales in­crease, as did Chrysler's Ram pick­up. Sales of Gen­er­al Mo­tors' Chevy Sil­ver­a­do rose four per cent, while the GMC Sier­ra was up nine per cent. Toy­ota's strug­gling big truck, the Tun­dra, post­ed a huge in­crease of 68 per cent. The ris­ing de­mand helped push to­tal US au­to sales last month to an an­nu­al rate of 14.5 mil­lion. That's the best month­ly sales pace since the gov­ern­ment's "Cash for Clunk­ers" re­bate pro­gram in Au­gust of 2009.

Pent-up de­mand is part of the rea­son for the truck in­crease. The av­er­age ve­hi­cle on US roads is near­ing 11 years old, and some are sim­ply wear­ing out. But au­tomak­ers and in­dus­try an­a­lysts say the eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery, new hous­ing in par­tic­u­lar, is start­ing to make buy­ers feel more com­fort­able about a big-tick­et pur­chase.

There's a di­rect cor­re­la­tion be­tween the hous­ing mar­ket and pick­up sales, they say. When peo­ple who work in hous­ing or oth­er con­struc­tion are more con­fi­dent, they tend to in­vest in equip­ment. Some may be adding crews and need ve­hi­cles to get them to and from job sites. Hous­ing has been in the dumps since the 2008 fi­nan­cial melt­down. But re­cent­ly there have been some good signs. US new home sales rose 3.6 per cent in Ju­ly to match a two-year high reached in May. In the past 12 months, sales have jumped 25 per cent. But new-home sales re­main well be­low the an­nu­al pace that econ­o­mists con­sid­er healthy.

Gas mileage al­so is play­ing a role in the pick­up in­crease. New­er mod­els are lighter than old­er ones and can be equipped with small but pow­er­ful V-6 en­gines. A busi­ness own­er can cut costs dra­mat­i­cal­ly by re­plac­ing a ten-year-old pick­up, said Jeff Schus­ter, se­nior vice pres­i­dent of fore­cast­ing for LMC Au­to­mo­tive, an in­dus­try con­sult­ing firm.

AP