It is not unusual for producer prices to decline early in recoveries, as wholesalers and manufacturers keep trimming inventories.

Thus, there was pressure on many dealers to trim inventories before the sale.

Fiat has said it will run factories slow for several weeks in the holiday season to trim inventories.

His company is now severely limiting overtime and, more ominously for this stage of the business cycle, trimming inventories further instead of expanding them.

Lean supplies and a pickup in sales make it more likely that businesses will trim inventories less in coming months.

The Boston bank said "all respondents" indicated they were trimming inventories or jobs or deferring capital projects.

This has added to refiners' and dealers' desire to trim inventories, to minimize costs, and to avoid being caught with higher-priced oil as prices go down.

Domestic auto sales fell 14.3 percent in late February, but were strong enough to trim inventories.

Analysts said the strong sales were allowing businesses to trim inventories slowly.

Among durable goods, production of autos fell 4.8 percent as car makers tried to trim inventories.