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I have seen blockheaded plant management with a good workforce, zero cooperation between management and the union workers, good management with a so so workforce, and a general do not care attitude on both sides. The worst situations were when I was called in due to a major system or press being down. Panic on the management side and apathy on the workforce side made my life difficult, and a union leader telling me I could not do this or that just made the downtime longer.

In all of this discussion, I have an observation. In working as a supplier of production machinery to the automakers I have been in many stamping and assembly plants across the US and Mexico. If it was up to me, I would prefer to locate a plant in Mexico mostly due to the workforce. In US plants I often ran into the attitude of "we cannot do it that way because we always have done it this way". And many times this ended up causing problems and delays that ended up costing multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the Mexican plants the workforce was more open to new and better ways of doing things.

The future in the US for automotive is affordability. And the domestic manufacturers are behind the 8 ball. They have been going upmarket for years, leaving the entry level to the Koreans. In electrification they are going after the premium market, neglecting the lower end of hybrid cars. Even pickups have gotten stupid expensive. The big danger to the domestics is if an offshore manufacturer hits the sweet spot of an affordable vehicle that has a reasonable level of equipment and decent looks. Chinese building in Mexico is a serious threat, but would be a welcome option for a large part of the market.

I would consider an EV when there is one that would fully replace my current car or pickup. In range, capability (for my pickup that means a true 8 foot bed) and cost.

To a degree. Give the grey hairs the time to properly train a younger crew to replace them. I have done it twice - it works.

Another oddball sighting - a Ford Cargo with a grain body.

On a side note - the other day I saw a Ford LCF platform body on the road. I have not seen one of them in years.

Charging stations need the same kind of regulation and standardization that gasoline and diesel fueling stations have. They must be inspected periodically to make sure you are getting what you pay for, prices must be posted so you know the cost before you start charging, and there is to be one connector standard (a gasoline nozzle will fit anything from a 72 Gremlin to a 2023 Rolls and a diesel nozzle will fit everything from a 53 KW to a 2023 Mack). Otherwise things just degenerate into a total mess.

For years I worked next to a Roadway terminal. Ford "C"s everywhere, even some with tandems. Even before that I remember Roadway Mack Bs with the trailers emblazoned with "ROADWAY" in 5 foot high letters running on the OH and PA Turnpikes.

On Ford pickups I have installed trailer brake controllers on I have used the Ford cable that connects the trailer brake controller to the vehicles wiring harness. Connect the cable to the controller, and then plug it in. A dealer parts dept should have the cable or be able to order it.

In the engineering world (soon to be 50 years in it) we use pound-foot for torque and foot -pound for energy. I worked mostly in the SI (metric) world and used Newton-meters for torque and joules for energy. When I was learning the ropes it was explained that torque was a force (the pound) acting over a distance (the foot) and that potential energy was the distance (foot) that a weight (pound) was above the ground plane surface. I do not know how torque got switched around in the language, but when you are doing calculations it can make a difference, as I have seen some people believing that torque = energy since both are stated in foot pounds.

Super Duty availability seems to be tight. At a state highway depot I go by regularly the Super Duties being cycled out are replaced with a mix of Chevy and GMC. Interestingly, they still have one old Ranger regular cab in regular use. Also, at the local level, PUIs are being replaced with Durangos.

Selling an assembly plant to a prospective competitor? Might not be the best move for the future.

A Ram dealer near me has at least 30 Promaster cutaways sitting on the lot, the most I have ever seen there. They usually have 2 or 3. I would assume that they are waiting for cube bodies.

Hello Bob, I spent many years on the supplier side at many Ford facilities, not direct.

Yes. 7Mary3, White Motors. It was painful to watch that company go down due to clueless management. And the Sterling Engineering office had some industry veterans and a number of people from other industries that better understood some of the vocational fields.

From what I remember, Sterling was going to be their vocational leader. They had a vocational design office outside of Cleveland, OH with a good size staff. The Sterling branded Rams were a bit of a stop gap effort when Freightliner wasn't getting their expected returns from the Sterling vocational effort, and they wanted to expand the offerings their dealers had.

Yes, a lot of money was put into Sterling. They started an entire operation dedicated to modifications of standard models to better suit them to vocational applications. I almost joined that operation, and a friend was the head of it. They even developed custom frame extensions and mods to suit specific applications. They kept that operation going until just about the end.

Back in the day I drove '58 F500 with a 223 I6 (3.7 liter today) regularly loaded to a total gross of about 22,000 lg (cattle feed/chicken feed, fertilizer) (based on the scales at the feed mill) and the engine never grenaded. And it had a horsepower rating of around 126. The engines today in the F150s are very capable if you do not try to do things like taking a steep hill at 75 flat out. You do not need big power to move big loads, you just need to do it sensibly.

Ford seems to have been most effected by this, across all lines. The city where I live has had several PIUs on order since the beginning of the year that have the delivery continually pushed back. Theyt went ahead and ordered some Durangos and 6 to 8 weeks later they had them. Same thing for 3/4 and one ton trucks, where they always had Fords in the past they now have GMCs (and one of the Chevy/Isuzu cabovers). I have been seeing this more often in the last few months.

Ford's quality issues are due to corporate culture, and will not improve unless the culture changes. Back in the late '80s thru the mid teens I worked with suppliers to Ford (primarily production equipment and supplies) and Ford was about the worst of the automakers to deal with. They wanted suppliers to follow obsolete specs, incur needless expense just to keep front office denizens happy, and micromanage supplier operations. The worst is that they were always months late on paying invoices (180 days out minimum). The only successful projects were those where the plant people would run interference to let us supply what the plant wanted and needed instead of what corporate decided what they needed.

Yes, someone I know works at an upfitter that only does snow plow and salt/liquid deicer bodies. According to him, International has an option where there are no mods or drilling of the frame required and the electrical system is just plug in and go. This saves several weeks in the process, and time is money also.

The big issue in EV market penetration is being avoided by everyone. It is affordability. At this moment a significant portion of the market is being priced out of the used car market, let alone new cars, and none of the automakers (in the US at least) seem to acknowledge that a large portion of the market cannot afford $40K and up vehicles. I can see where in 10 years or so Ford and GM can have 40%EV penetration, but only because total sales will be down due to only covering the upper end of the market. Face it, the only way way sales are at the level they are at today is low interest and 72 month and up loans. When money tightens up the automakers who find a way to serve the market for $30K and under and make money doing it will thrive.

All the discussion over range, charging station availability and use is good. In my view, what is needed is charging station availability on the scale of the Pilot, Loves, Flying J, TA, and QT travel stop locations along the interstates and other major highways. I recently been driving alot ( 650 to 750 miles a day) in an F150 with a 37 gallon fuel tank and averaging 20 mpg. I usually refueled after driving about 500 miles. I could find at least one of the above travel stops about every 100 to 150 miles, and it would take 10 to 15 minutes to refuel. Usually a fuel stop was not near a destination or when I would normally stop to eat. Now, most of these travel stops had some 30 to 48 fueling points, so with the increased time needed for EV charging there would probably need to be 60 to 100 charging points when EVs have a large share of the market. This can be done, but it will take considerable investment and real estate. Not to mention the electrical generation and transmission infrastructure to support it. For me, strong hybrid or plug in hybrid would be the way to go, as it could cover my day to day 200 or so miles per week use, 300 to 350 occasional miles per day weekend use, and my usual long distance trips. I do not see EVs (such as the F150 Lightning) and the charging infrastructure being up to my needs for at least 10 to 20 years given how long it takes to permit transmission line expansion and generating capacity in the US. (recent example, there has been a proposal to build an offshore wind farm on Lake Erie for the last 25 years. It has been held up by permitting issues and interminable lawsuits, mostly from so called environmentalists, since day one. Another group has a proposal on the table, and there are lawsuits that are holding it up now also.)

This pledge is all well and good, but there is one big BUT : Look at the total energy used in the US in the highway vehicle transportation sector. It is a large number, and even accounting for the increased efficiency of EVs, we will have to significantly increase our generating capacity to cover this. And to cover the charging stations needed, there will have to be in increase in transmission line capacity. Just in permitting, it takes years to get a permit to construct a facility (we are going to need nuclear to provide 24 hour baseload for a great portion). For reference, to get a permit to build a 40 mile transmission line connection, our local utility had to go through a permitting process that took 12 years. What good are all of these EVs going to be if we have a shortage of electricity to charge them?