The largest car and truck auction yard in the Northwest sits just on the south side of the Yellowstone River near Billings.
If you’re looking to see how $4-a-gallon gas is putting the hurt on Montana, this is a good place to start.
Big, gas-guzzling SUVs are sitting around for weeks, said Jake Gertsch, a salesman there at the Auto Auction of Montana. Cars are in short supply and they cost more. There’s not a Toyota Prius hybrid in sight.
“I wish I had 50 of them,” Gertsch said. “We would sell every one we can get our hands on.”
Auto Auction of Montana is where car dealers buy and sell cars. Vehicles there are either from commercial fleets, like aged-out rental cars, or they’re trade-ins from other car lots that either don’t sell or the lot doesn’t want.
Gertsch’s observations are more than just a feeling. Statistics show that as gas prices spike higher into record territory, Montanans are trying to dump their old, inefficient SUVs and trucks; they’re buying smaller, lighter cars or getting on waiting lists for a hybrid. They’re even riding the bus.
Get in line
In Helena, where hybrids have always enjoyed high demand, people are waiting up to three months for a hybrid Honda Civic, said Tim Easton, sales manager at Grimes Motors.
Interest in the gas-stingy cars really took off about six months ago, Easton said. Today, there’s even a waiting list for the Honda Fit, a non-hybrid, five-door micro-wagon that gets up to 40 miles per gallon on the highway.
Helenans could soon be waiting for a conventional Honda Civic, too: as of last week, the lot had just one more of the efficient, small sedans on the lot.
“We sell them as fast as we can get them,” Easton said, adding that some buyers plunk their money down without even seeing the cars and wait for one to come in stock.
Many of those buyers are trading in larger SUVs, but those used vehicles are sitting unsold longer, despite price cuts.
Yellowstone County is the state’s largest auto market, according to state motor vehicle information, and accounts for 14 percent of all the cars sold in the state.
By one measure, at least, what people are trying to sell there are gas guzzlers. The number of SUVs, pick-up trucks and 4×4s for sale privately in The Billings Gazette classifieds jumped 23 percent from Memorial Day weekend of 2007 over Memorial Day weekend 2008.
Beau Hedin was one of them. Hedin said gas prices weren’t behind his decision to sell his 2003 Dodge Ram Hemi, although he added that he and his fiancee were downsizing to just one car: her 2002 Subaru.
But gas prices were affecting his ability to sell it: Hedin listed the truck last year and had “tons” of calls on it.
“To be honest, I haven’t had that many now,” he said.
Greg Gustafson at Billings’ Prestige Toyota said the waiting list for a Toyota Prius, the country’s most popular hybrid car, has doubled in recent weeks. Prius sales in Billings are up 50 percent, while sales of the Tundra full-size truck or the Sequoia large SUV are down a couple of points.
There’s also a waiting list for the hybrid Camry and sales of the small Corolla, which gets up to 40 miles to the gallon, are up as buyers decide not to wait for a Prius to be built and shipped from Japan.
Gustafson’s lot is getting so many “big old SUVs” they’re not even trying to sell them as used cars; those “great big tanks,” he said, go right to the auto auction.
State figures show it’s not just car dealers who don’t want larger vehicles. An analysis of two of Montana’s largest counties — Yellowstone and Missoula — show the number of smaller, more efficient vehicles registered with the state in March was up 39 percent compared with a year ago.
In March 2007, only 46 cars weighing less than 3,000 pounds — about the size of a Chevrolet Cobalt — were registered with the state. Last March, that figure had grown to 64.
(Interestingly, there were twice as many 6,400-pound Hummers registered with the state this year than last, an increase from two to four.)
“People buying new vehicles are downsizing,” said Dean Roberts, head of the Motor Vehicle Division, where all cars and trucks are registered.
Roberts said lots of people are also buying smaller, older cars, like old Toyotas and Hondas, and parking their bigger, less-efficient trucks and SUVs for now.
“They’re using them almost like disposable cars,” he said.
Take a hike
Some Montanans are getting out of their cars altogether. Statistics across the state show more Montanans are taking the bus.
The Department of Corrections contracts to run a shuttle for prison workers living in Butte and Anaconda. Between March and May, ridership on the bus was up 23 percent, as gas prices continued their hike.
In Missoula, home to the busiest city bus line in the state, the Mountain Line ridership is up around 12 percent this year and on track to hit a record, said Steve Earle, general manager of the Mountain Line.
“We’ve had as many inquiries in the last six weeks as we have in the last six years,” he said. “I’m going to attribute 90 percent of that to $4-a-gallon gas.”
About 20 times a day, Mountain Line busses are now so full of passengers, it’s standing room only, Earle said.
The new bus passengers include families with children, senior citizens and people commuting to and from work.
“Everybody that had been getting back and forth from the store and the library are all of sudden tremendously interested in finding a way to do it for 85 cents,” he said.
Earle said he thinks the days of cheap gas may be over for good and that people who turn to the bus are likely to stick to it. Over the past several years, he said, about 85 percent of riders who try the bus for the first time end up riding it long-term.
His line is looking at expanding new routes to Lolo, a bedroom community just south of town, along with other expansions.
Bus numbers are also up in Billings, home to the Met Transit line, said Ron Wenger, the Billings city transit manager. Riders were up 5 percent in the last month alone, he said, which is even more unusual because numbers typically go down in the early summer with the end of the school year and warmer walking weather.
About 70 percent of Met riders are elderly, disabled and students.
“The rest are what we call choice riders,” Winger said. “We’re seeing more of the choice riders beginning to take the bus. We hope so.”
So far, no Met buses are packed to capacity, as in Missoula, and Wenger said part of his challenge is convincing Billings residents that you really can “get there by bus.”
“But inquiries are definitely up,” he said, and the bus line is in the middle of revamping its routes to better serve commuters trying to get from one end of the city to the other.
Mass transit
Gas prices are hitting bus lines, too, Wenger and Earle said.
In Billings, the Met’s fuel budget has doubled in recent years, complicating efforts to add new or more frequent routes.
In Missoula, the Mountain Line runs on a blend of diesel and biodiesel fuel, Earle said. The biodiesel must be trucked in from out of state, further raising the cost.
The Mountain Line now spends about $500,000 a year on fuel.
“The more people you carry, the more fuel you use,” Earle said. “It’s going to be a real challenge.”
