Mahwah Man

Here's what's left of the Mahwah assembly plant - at one time the biggest assembly plant in North America. http://travela.priceline.com/hotel/overvie...otel-56358.html

Anybody thinking about moving out of Norfolk area, don't use Mayflower Transit. Their local company is New Bell. New Bell subcontracted us out to some fly-by-night Mayflower operation that was run by Sanford & Son. We paid a little bit more money to go with Mayflower because we were told by the salesman that we were going to get the white glove treatment. Instead, we got the rubber glove. We are in the process of filing dispute claims with Mayflower Transit, Inc. headquarters. Just be warned. Make sure that the movers you contact are the ones who will orchestrate the move. Look up their safety records on http://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/mcspa.asp . Ask them if they subcontract it out, and if they do, go with somebody else. Save yourself some aggravation and stress.

on the news ; plant shut down tonight ; big mess

Vote Democrat??? The only two senators voting as a united front AGAINST the pension reform act in November 2005 which passed by a margin of 97-2, were the two DEMOCRAT senators from Michigan, Levin and Stabenow. Here is a link to the vote: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll...ote=00328#state Could it be that these two DEMOCRAT senators were in the pocket of the Big Three? Does it look that way? Guess so. They tried to sell you out. Michigan, the big bad Democrat state, which is supposed to look after its constituents, voted AGAINST making companies make their pension plans solvent and stop borrowing against them. Out of the top 50 companies, Ford had the worst lien against their pension fund. It used to be like $120 billion. And when the time came for the Democrats to protect YOUR pension, they voted against YOUR interests. Remember that when you vote.

There is NO GUARANTEE on anything with this company .

This is what happens when you take a company that's on the top, ready to take over GM, and try to turn it into a social experiment. This is Jack the Knife's "sea of white faces" speech. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=22838 I've seen supervisors leave because there's nowhere to go. They keep getting headhunters to bring people in off the street to be superintendents or area managers without any floor experience, just because they've got the college degrees and make a statement about how "diverse" the company is. The Japs don't give a crap about diversity. Their criteria is based on merit and ability.

I had bought an '82 Mustang Cobra. It had an experimental small V8. It wasn't a 5.0, it was a little smaller. After about 3-1/2 years, it passed the 3 year/36,000 miles. I had 17,000 miles on the car and blew the rear main seal out of the motor. I took it to Ford. They put a new seal in it. I called Detroit and got their Customer Complaint Department. Filed a complaint and a few months later, I got the check for what I had paid to have the work done. Try that. It might help.

If I can remember right, maybe five or more years ago, Ford was ready to introduce a P289. It was bigger than the Ranger and smaller than the 150. I know they stopped it, but does anybody know what happened to the plans?

When I first started, Ford had a suggestion program that would pay you for a suggestion if you could save the company money. If you could save the company ten cents per unit, they'd give you a thousand dollars. Then they changed to a suggestion program that gave you points and a redemption catalog that you could choose bonus gifts from. But the supervisors were stealing suggestions left and right from everybody on the line and coming away with big TVs and stereo systems - you name it. So the company got rid of that program quick too. Then they came around with their FPS program, which was great for eliminating jobs and we were all told that it would "save the company". Look where it's gotten you now. For the last ten years, Ford, in an effort to save money, cut its white collar "think tanks" and started desperately seeking ideas from the rank and file on the shop floor. I'm sorry to say, but we have not been able to give the company enough ideas where it really matters. We can cut corners but we can't redesign the wheel. That's Ford's job. They've sliced the legs out from underneath themselves by gutting their engineers and design force. I look at some of the cars that Ford has introduced over the last 15 years and can't figure out what kind of focus groups they're dealing with. We need to start hiring design people and we need to hire and keep engineers to make the product work. When I need a combo drop on my job, what used to be a one-day procedure to get an engineer to come down and have it done that night now entails four months worth of paperwork, FPS meetings and pray to God that you're on good terms with your group leader, and I've already posted how I feel about them. My main point is You have to stop looking to the people on the floor for answers. You've asked us for the last ten years. Apparently, we don't know. Hire some people who can make it work.

This is a direct violation of the company's own zero-tolerance policy and anti-harassment policy. Who are they trying to kid? Where's the UAW here? Where are the meatheads from the ACLU? Don't get me wrong. I can't stand to see a foreign car in the parking lot. My daughter told me she wanted to get a Nissan; I told her "You're not going to park it in MY driveway." I'm as Ford Blue as they come. But when they tell you on one hand you can't bust somebody's chops for taking time off or slacking on the job because if you do, you can have a harassment charge against you, how does it compare to what they're doing by harassing people who drive foreign brand cars by making them walk the extra mile? You've got Nissan; you've got Honda; you've got Toyota; you've got BMW; you've got Hyundai -- all with assembly plants in North America. Are we talking American-made cars or are we talking UAW? And I hate these bastards. I hate to have to point this crap out. But when you're wrong, you're wrong. Get back to working on what's going on inside the plant instead of what's sitting in the parking lot. Priorities, not window dressing for the local papers.

One of the biggest waste of money is the Group Leaders. These people are nothing but bathroom attendants, relieving people for bathroom calls instead of the customary utility people filling in as relief. These people are given an extra $1 an hour just to come in the morning and stock shelves that should have been stocked by the night shift group leader. How do the Group Leaders do nothing all day but then have to work through first break, then have to work through lunch, then have to work through last break? And then at the end of the day, the job they pick for inspection is always the very last job of the day, which gets them another half hour overtime. I’m not stupid and I don’t believe management is stupid. I believe that they see that this is going on and only appease Detroit by saying they have their “Group Leaders on the job!” They turn a blind eye to the total inefficiency of this group. Plant managers need to sit down and look at every area’s time sheets. The supervisors should be asked to explain why certain people are getting overtime every day and to explain why the jobs they’re performing on break or at lunch can’t be performed during normal operating hours. You give somebody a fluorescent vest and a radio and they think they can run the company but in reality they‘re just a waste of money. The last thing we need is another straw boss on the floor. Leave the supervisors and keep the company engineers. Just get back to building vehicles and not building egos as well as a bloated bureaucracy that feeds off itself.

I think Kentucky (Explorer) might be on the block.

If you'd like to know what happens when Ford shuts down the biggest assembly plant in North America after only 25 years, click on this site. Toxic Legacy I do not add this information in an effort to make Ford look bad. Unfortunately, this happens to many industrial companies all over the country/world. This happens to be the town that I grew up in. Our high school symbol was the Thunderbird. Ford was a big part of my town. It's a shame that this is how Ford in Mahwah is going to be remembered - it's going to be remembered in a lawsuit.

I was told 100 people signed up for Flat Rock from Norfolk and they took them all. Time will tell.

Ford, GM, Chrysler have all had joint ventures in the past and at present with foreign companies. GM/Toyota/Isuzu; Ford/Nissan/Kia; Chrysler/Mitsubishi. When I started with Ford in the mid-seventies, we were putting parts from China, Mexico, Canada into vehicles. In the early 90's I had a Probe. While changing the oil, I looked up and on the starter was printed "Mitsubishi". This is multinational and has always been multinational. Each plant posts a list of how much of their product is made in America or foreign.