tbone

This can’t be overstated!

A variety of EVs.

It would be a travesty of this plant wasn’t flexible enough to build a variety of products.

It will likely be dependent on who wins the next election whether this temporary or longer term.

You have mentioned the quality of the Explorers a few times. For some perspective, we have had a 2020 and a 2022 ST with 45k and 36k miles, respectively. We still have the 22. Both of these have been pretty solid, with the exception of the recalls. CAP certainly has issues, but not all of the product coming out of there is poor quality. We have some Explorers at my work that have been pretty abused and our fleet guy hasn’t had many complaints about them either.

This is why it’s paramount to have a strong relationship with your suppliers, so they don’t do stuff like that. I think it boils down to Ford paying a sub an amount to make a reasonable profit while having trust that they will bill a quality product. It’s a partnership, and shouldn’t be adversarial, kind of like how their relationship with UAW SHOULD be. Trying to extract every penny out of their supplier Doesn’t lend itself to to a good relationship. You can argue business is business, but that’s not exactly true when building relationships. Hopefully we will see some improvement on the supplier relationship index over the next couple years.

imagine if you were Boeing. In my opinion, they have subcontracted out way too many things, and they appear to be currently feeling the impact of that. Imagine if Ford could save money on warranty costs enough that they can stop trying to save money through decontenting.

The dealer picked up our 2023 Escape for a recall on screen replacement. Other than that, though, the build was quality has been very good.

I recall this with the mediums and at the time applauded it. In respect to my post I was referring to their bread and butter 1/2 tons, which doesn’t appear to impact their sales. I’m all for made in the USA but as a third party observer, I thought the union demands weren’t reasonable, as such any long term repercussions will be self inflicted, IMO.

The fact that some of the GM truck twins are being built in Mexico doesn’t seem to be impacting their sales too much, so I don’t see a reason why it affect Ford too much.

Yes, no kidding. And to be clear I was referencing the Bronco Raptor not the truck, although the truck did go up as well by about $4k for the 23 model over my 22. The build and price for the 24 wasn’t up yet so I couldn’t see what the change was going to be. Needless to say, it’s getting pretty painful.

I'm not being contentious, but if Amazon can ship 7,000,000,000+ packages a year across a multitude of shipping methods, and know where they’re at, Ford should be able to figure this out too, with 2 million vehicles. It does feel like a lack of effort on their part to develop an effective system. I have ordered the vast majority of our vehicles, and they’re tracking has always been crap. It sure seems like using the internal modem would be the most effective method of tracking them as previously mentioned.

I really don’t disagree with anything that you have said here, however, unless I missed it, I don’t think I saw any quotes of him specifically ripping hourly workers within the union, and it was more about the unions approach to the negotiations. At this point, I wouldn’t care if he openly criticized Fain though. Ford and UAW are a partnership whether people like it or not, and how would you feel if your partner publicly treated you that way and did things to damage you? Every day a strike continues the cost is mounting, so how long as a reasonable time to let a strike continue? Until the company is buried? Until the union is broken? at some point a corporation of that size has to come to some kind of agreement or close the doors. This is beside the fact that the individual union employee on strike is losing income every day it goes on. I personally would like to see more visible accountability at the CEO level, but a massive corporation doesn’t change in a day and leadership deserve some time to turn things around. You can talk about how much they’re paid and that they’ll be OK if they get fired, but they are human, and most people don’t like to fail and have their name associated with that. The the issues you have mentioned above are real, and somebody does should be held accountable for them, but I venture to say that there are quite a number of people throughout the structure of this manufacturer that have a hand in those failures from top to bottom. Let’s get rid of them, from the managers that aren’t managing effectively, to the line worker that is routinely doing poor quality work.

Obviously, there are different grades of stainless steel. Most of the stainless steels that I’ve been around never seem to be completely “stainless” or 100% rust free. I’m guessing these were not the highest quality stainless steel. it seems to me that these trucks would require a lot of exterior maintenance to maintain a clean looking vehicle.

Me neither. The 24 Raptor with the same options as the 22 model I bought is now almost $15k more. I don’t see the value I’m getting for that substantial price increase, as such, I would not buy another one.

I 100% agree with this. This isn’t situation of forced labor. People have free will to work for Ford or leave. They are not compelled to be there. If the actions of the union lead to more Fords being built in Mexico, I will continue to buy them even though I try to buy products made in United States, because at least know that Ford historically has tried to maintain a US base manufacturing footprint, and the loss of that manufacturing will likely be as result of unfair labor negotiation practices by the union. One of the contentions of the negotiations at KTP; UAW said, "Ford's continued attempts to erode the skilled trades at Kentucky Truck Plant." Ford has proposed that skilled trades maintenance workers perform multiple tasks across different types of work. The UAW has resisted as a threat to jobs, people familiar with the bargaining said. If this is anything like the union plant, I used to work at, where the skilled trades would only work on whatever that specific trade was, and nothing else, and then sat around until something came about. I’ve also witnessed this same behavior at the McCormick place in Chicago with the different labor unions that were supporting its operations, The question is, why wouldn’t Ford want to try to maximize efficiency by having people that are sitting there doing nothing do something productive? Does that really sound unreasonable? Why would they want to hire somebody new when they have man hours that are sitting there being unused?

I think this is highly valuable so the engineer understands the impact of design on the manufacturing process, and the workers building them.

and your point is?

I love it when people castigate the CEOs for their pay. Im relatively certain that you would switch jobs with the CEO if you could to receive that pay. Maybe not though, considering they’re responsible for the entire company, and whether it goes in the right direction, or the wrong direction and implications of those decisions. CEO gets paid with the market will bear for that type of position. If you don’t like it, go put yourself in a position to become a CEO. I respect anybody willing to work from the janitor to the CEO, but people make choices that put them in a position to work a given job. Some people have an easier time making those choices based on their life circumstances, but that’s life and sometimes you have to work harder than others to put yourself in the best position.

You really believe that the impact of this latest contract and the long term implications of it have no bearing on the ability to compete with all the different brands? You do understand it’s American consumers that are also going to feel that impact right? Nobody disputes that the workers didn’t deserve raises, and I believe everyone should make as much money as they can, but that contract is pretty extraordinary, and the unions approach to it was not positive IMO.

I 100% agree with your last statement. The US auto industry is more than just about selling cars and trucks. It’s also a national security asset.

This has always blown my mind that US and European companies would agree to this arrangement. If you want know how Chinese technological capabilities have increased at the rate that they have, this is a major contributor. Why you would expose your intellectual property to this level is beyond me. Why the US and EU would not take steps to eliminate this requirement is beyond me.

perhaps he was listening? https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-ceo-open-working-with-rivals-compete-with-china-2024-02-15/

Chinese BEVs need to be have tariffs placed on them. They have been subsidized by the CCP, thus they haven’t been competing fairly. The are a number of reasons the Chinese would want to disrupt foreign auto industries and it is certainly more than monetary reasons. Ford needs to get out of bed with Chinese battery companies, and find others to partner with. They cannot be trusted. There has to be better options than a foreign adversary.

I think that is a great looking vehicle, at least from this angle. Of course I didn’t mind the Ram concept either though. I thought it had appropriate styling for a next generation type vehicle.