Ronnie Silber has to have a sport utility vehicle.
Silber lives in Laurel and works at the Sparrows Point steel mill, a 70-mile round-trip commute. Those highway miles favor a small, fuel-efficient car, but the Point?s own roadways can put a beating on workers? vehicles.
So Silber needs to buy another SUV to replace the 2004 Ford Explorer he?s had up for sale for two weeks.
But this time the truck will be a four-cylinder SUV, which he thinks will cut down on his gas use by about 35 percent.
But only if he can sell his current vehicle.
“It will be tough,” Silber said. “The last one that I had, I wouldn?t say the market value was fantastic, but it was palatable. But this one, for what a dealer says someone will give you for an SUV with high mileage, it?s ridiculous.”
He said the trade-in value of the vehicle might have once been about $6,000 or $6,500, but he hasn?t gotten a dealer offer for more than about $4,000, the most dealers think it would bring at auction.
Silber is in the same gas-guzzling situation as SUV owners and dealers around the metro area who want ? or need ? to unload their big vehicles.
But values of those trucks and SUVs have skidded downward as gas prices have skyrocketed, and no plush seats or DVD players will improve how many miles per gallon they get.
The average price of a gallon of regular gas in the Baltimore metro area reached $3.931 Friday, up from $3.923 the previous day, $3.58 a month ago and $3.11 last year, according to AAA.
The price of diesel, which many of those big trucks use, was up even more, reaching $4.811 a gallon Friday from $4.30 last month and $2.91 a year ago.
“The large SUVs are still selling, but they?re not selling like they were,” said Bruce Schindler, owner of Bob Davidson Ford, Lincoln and Mercury on East Joppa Road. “Over the last month we have definitely seen a quicker transition to fuel-efficient cars.”
Schindler said SUVs and trucks still have their place pulling a boat or trailer or packed with family members on vacation, but things are changing.
He said sales of the fuel-efficient Ford Focus are up 35 percent from the year before, and Ford?s new “crossover” SUV premiering next month, the Flex, will get about 24 miles per gallon.
A full-size 2008 Chevy Tahoe, by comparison, gets 12 to 14 miles per gallon in city driving, while a new Honda Civic averages about 29 miles per gallon.
“I?ve been in the business since 1972; I?ve seen more of a change in the product mix in the last month or two than I?ve seen in that time,” he said. “It really is different. We?ll sell three Ford Focuses in a day, when maybe you sold one every other day.”
Dealers can shift the cars on their lot to stock more fuel-efficient models. But that?s not an option for Tom Rovinski, a southwest Baltimore County resident who has an inventory of just one: a 2000 Eddie Bauer Edition Ford Explorer that came to him througha business deal and hasn?t sold in more than two months on the block.
The SUV is in good condition, Rovinski said, is loaded with a variety of options, and is priced at $2,000 ? under its Kelley Blue Book value of $10,900.
But despite a few test drivers and some interest from passers-by, the truck still sits on his driveway, and Rovinski said he?s begun considering just driving the truck himself or even donating it.
“Because of the cost of gasoline, everyone?s trying to go small and lightweight,” he said. “I?ve never seen anything like this.”
Intern Anthony Fair contributed to this story.
