Ford Cuts F-150 Production
The Kansas City Star reports that sluggish sales of Ford's former cash cow, the F-150 pickup truck, have led to a dramatic production slow-down. For two weeks in October, FoMoCo will idle half their operations at the pickup-producing Claycomo plant. Some 2100 (of 4400) hourly employees will be paid for doing naught. And thanks to "competitive operating agreements" negotiated with the United Auto Workers, returning employees will work 10-hour shifts for four weekdays with Fridays off. Currently, Ford dealers are holding 185,400 F-series trucks in their lots, which represents a 72-day inventory. (This after Ford's Norfolk F-150 plant was permanently shuttered last year.) Hot on the heels of GM's pickup truck pull-back (now a full stop, obviously), the F-150 slowdown is more proof that the entire pickup segment is undergoing a radical contraction. The trend will hit The Big 2.8's bottom lines but good.
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I'm sorry for the workers, but glad to hear FISO sales are sluggish.
Honestly I wonder why the F150 would NEED a complete redesign. How many different ways are their to architect a pickup truck? Didn't the structural analysis guys do their work well in the last redesign? No matter what they do, pickup truck sales are going to continue to slide. The weak housing market is only a small part of the problem. The big problem is that people who don't need to commute in a truck everyday are not going to buy one in the era of $3/gallon fuel. This is also putting a lot of lightly used trucks on the used market as the posers switch to cars and get out of their 2-5 year old never-seen-mud trucks. Ford needs to keep the F-150 competitive, but they would be fools to do a 100% redesign as there is not enough they can do to fundamentally improve the product with a complete redo that can't be done with tweaks, new engines, new transmissions, etc. Look how little ROI GM is getting on the GMT900 version of it's pickups. They could have gotten as much sales help out of a thorough freshening as they have gotten from a 100% redo. What Ford they really needs is some good small trucks to serve that abandoned market.
RobertSD is right, the new F-150 is a major update, much more than a facelift. The whole front stub is completely new, suspension/steering/frame/etc. It will be class leading.