iamweasel

I can tell you with certainty Freightliner has already signed up for it.

I know what they are, I just contend that "Active" is a stupid name for a trim level and having two "ST" anythings as trims on the same model is also a bad idea.

Wonder why they decided to name that trim level "Active." That just seems like a stupid name to me, especially since XLT is such a well known trim level that has always had similar content levels across models. Then you still have an "ST-Line" and an "ST?" C'mon....that's just marketing getting too cute. Those are too similar..... That being said, bringing down prices was a must with this model. It was over-priced to begin with and they had to issue large incentives so sell the volume needed, so these price adjustments help bring the MSRP closer to the real transaction prices.

Regarding the "Final Pay" - that never used to be some special incentive amount that guaranteed a quick sale. They would just give you a similar amount to what was offered at the time. We just did it so that we could stop managing incentives for a certain model year. For instance, right now 24MY's and 25MY's are being sold. When 26MY's come out, we'd do a flat pay on all remaining 24MY's and from that point going forward we'd only manage 25MY and 26MY. For about a year and a half I was on the team of 5 people who managed all the C&I programs. It was pure chaos because we had to manage not only the national programs but all the regional programs which made it complicated. (Also all the lease programs which was a nightmare.) The other big issue impacting the dealer margins is the spread between dealer cost and retail has been slowly getting squeezed over time. Dealer cost is going up at a faster rate than retail prices over the past 10-20 years so dealers make less per unit than before. Especially with the Big 3, there are too many dealerships close together in many areas which makes it easier for the customer to find that "Hundred Over Ford" dealer noted earlier. The COVID-era supply chain issues lowering factory output stopped that for a while, and even increased margins, but as things normalize again the dealer per unit margins will continue to fall when comparing apples-to-apples on a given unit IMO.

Many of them do rotations on the line as part of the program. (As I did right out of college....worked on the line at Michigan Truck Plant.)

And those folks on the line have every opportunity to get that engineering or designer job if they want.

It's not all on Ford to do themselves. Transporters are for-hire companies and it's a matter of hiring the right one and working together. Back when I was involved with that, there were bar codes on every vehicle and they'd get scanned in every time they moved locations/changed hands. I believe the data is there, but Ford just won't do anything about it even though they've had TONS of complaints from dealers and customers about the inability to get updates on where vehicles are. That's just Ford being cheap or not caring - don't know which is worse. Also, closing a sale before a vehicle hits a dealership is common practice and happens all the time with no issue. We do it all the time in our business, too. Many of our trucks don't even come to our dealerships. (Direct ship to the customer and/or body builder.)

The margins are why they had to abandon small sedans in the first place. (Or lack thereof in many cases.) Having a $2,000 cost disadvantage vs foreign makes is a death sentence on a small car versus a big margin F-150 or Expedition where you can deal with it a lot more.

Yeah, even with Japan and Korea the trade is one-sided. People always say "well Ford and GM didn't make the cars that people in those countries wanted." Well even if they did they would not be able to sell them in large quantities given the home turf protections in place. My old boss at Ford did a 3-year stint at Ford of Japan when that was still going and the stories he told were pretty amazing. (I actually knew about 10 people who did rotations over there and all had similar experiences.) Everyone would agree Toyota makes cars people want, right? Well guess what......in South Korea last year there were 1,720,919 cars and light trucks sold. You know how many Toyota sold? A whopping 8,495 units. Good for a massive 0.49% market share. (Honda was even worse....3,140 total sales.) Gee.....I wonder why 2 of the most reputable companies can't penetrate the market in South Korea? FWIW, Hyundai/Kia sold 1,325,737 units in South Korea....a 77% market share. Same issue in reverse.....Hyundai/Kia bailed out of Japan years ago due to awful sales and there were stories like this in 2022 but not sure what has happened since then. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/south-koreas-hyundai-motor-take-fresh-crack-japan-sales-2022-02-08/ Bottom line is the US and Europe need to get a lot smarter with how international trade in the auto industry is done or there will be no US/Euro companies left in 50 years.

Yes Ford has had communication problems for decades but it's worse than ever now. They went from caring but just not being very good at it, to not caring at all and ignoring it. Agree on too many layers and short-term thinking being an issue. Part of that is just how things are set up. Ford has always had trouble recruiting top talent due to being in Detroit where nobody wants to live so they have to sell people across the country on how much better for their career Ford would be over other Fortune 500 companies due to how they develop their employees. It's true, and they do a good job getting you ready for upper management, but that tends to have people working there change jobs a ton and that constant churn, and lack of subject matter experts, does not help with overall efficiency. I worked at Ford in Dearborn for 13 years and had 10 different positions (6 promotions) in Manufacturing, Marketing & Sales and Product Development. Just as I got comfortable in a position I got moved to another. I never got bored and I never had too much junk in my offices because I knew I wouldn't be there very long. LOL.... On the order board, pretty sure my counterpart is on top of things but today he was telling us about how he ordered 6 exact spec F-150's for a customer. 4 were ordered initially then 2 were ordered a month later. 2 of the first 4 came in......and then the last 2 arrived before the 2nd pair from the first order. It makes no sense. They claim scheduling is FIFO but that is not really accurate. That's just a small example of how whacky things are. All I know is this guy has his crap together and he does not complain about his DTNA orders like he does with the Ford stuff.

Actually, it is. Ford can easily step-up and put together a system to track where trucks are while in transit. On our DTNA trucks with Detroit engines, I can goto our internal web portal and pull up a step-by-step chart of where the truck is in the process and even click a map and see where the truck is in real time. Ford just hasn't take the steps to provide something like this. (With Cummins we don't get a map but we do see the chart which has some basic info, and if I need more specifics we hit a button and an email gets sent to DTNA AND the transporter and they'll usually respond within an hour or two and tell me exactly where the truck is and what's going on with it. Even this would be a step-up from what Ford does....which is basically nothing.) On a funny note, one time I had one of our mexico builds coming across the country and I noticed it randomly stopped outside Atlanta GA for a few days. That is very odd as usually once it gets to Atlanta I'll see it later that day or the next depending on which of my locations it goes to. When you see a truck isn't moving usually it's because of a breakdown but the GPS signal was not anywhere near a Freightliner dealer. I was like what the heck is going on.....well the driver was from that area and decided to stop and visit family for a few days with my truck. LOL.....and yeah, he got in trouble for that. That's a big no-no.

Technically, yes Hino is still around from what my counterpart is telling me. They are only getting a handful of trucks per quarter promised to them. (But we'll see if they actually come through on that. They definitely have people wondering how much longer they'll officially be alive.)

Unless the US government radically changes their business policies then we will continue to let foreign companies have an advantage over domestic companies. This has been an issue for years. (Part of the reason why Ford/GM still can't compete with Japan/Korea on cost per vehicle.) It's pretty ridiculous that China makes non-Chinese auto companies sign 50/50 JV agreements with local Chinese companies to do business there, but on the flip side BYD can freely sell into Europe and/or the US with limited or no barriers? C'mon people....what are we doing here.

All of the above, honestly. Just seems like every high level decision lately isn't working out. But more importantly from the dealer side, the one thing that is much worse than before is the simple lack of communication regarding what's going on with production, scheduling, parts availability, product support, etc. All the basics of building cars and trucks. Ford seems to almost go out of their way to NOT help answer questions and find solutions to problems. The randomization of which orders get scheduled or cancelled and which ones get priority is a total cluster%$#@. My company has several OEM's and the only company we hate dealing with more than Ford is Hino.

I know a lot of Ford employees, some very high up, and I also know several Ford dealers (including my own company.) Not one person I know has anything good to say about Farley and the crew of execs running the company at the moment. The cumulative impact of 2 bad Leadership groups in a row (CEO's/Top Managers) is really starting to take a toll......