iamweasel

They haven't said anything to us about abandoning Charlotte yet, but that would make some sense so we'll see. The've never mentioned any issues to us about needing a place to build their electric trucks so I don't know about that, either. On the $62K NRR, if there was no Chevy dealer in town it's likely that price on the Isuzu would have gone up some. Isuzu buyers want cabovers and if there is no other cabover to cross shop that helps protect margins. Also that is an asking price, not a real transaction price, so you can't read too much into prices you see online. Isuzu has zero plans for tandems or conventionals. Every dealer meeting someone asks about it and Isuzu cuts them off hard and says no way. Doing tandems is a totally different animal (same reason Ford doesn't do them) and selling conventionals completely goes against the Isuzu "cabovers are better" mantra. Our pie in the sky dream is that when the B6.7 octane is out Isuzu put that into the trucks instead of the GM engine and then tells Chevy to take a hike again. The only reason they are in bed with Chevy in the first place is to get the gas engine. Isuzu uses Cummins B6.7 diesels now so should be easy to integrate the B6.7 octane from a purchasing perspective. Now whether or not that engine actually fits in a non-FTR Isuzu is another matter and I don't know the answer to that right now.

Interesting time to build a new plant. Isuzu has open capacity right now and tons of excess stock sitting at the ports waiting for dealer orders so the last thing Isuzu needs right now is even more production. All that does is depress margins for both the dealers and Isuzu. The Isuzu dealer network is already annoyed they have to compete with Chevy dealers again who have that auto-business mentality and generally give away these trucks for very little profit. In the truck business, as a dealer you generally don't have another like-franchise in your same town to compete with but with Chevy and Isuzu you do - and that destroys margins for the dealers. During COVID, etc, when demand skyrocketed there was more demand than supply, but that's generally been the only time in the past 20 years where that has happened with Isuzu. They better hope their growth plans become reality otherwise they'll be drowning in excess capacity in the future.

There was talk about Detroit leasing out what will be the former DD5/DD8 assembly area in Redford to Cummins so they could produce some engines there. (A way of adding capacity for Cummins engines without them having to do it at their own plants.) The Detroit facility is massive and they build engines, transmissions and axles all under the same roof. Don't think they would try to brand them as Detroits, though. They would just produce them as Cummins in Detroit's building. We wouldn't go the way of PACCAR who is always tricking customers into thinking they made their own components that were really built by someone else. (ie. PX engines...) Just don't know if that's still the plan or not. Would be an interesting arrangement to have Cummins engines rolling down a line 50 feet away from DD13/15/16's. LOL...

The B7.2 is supposed to start in 27CY. That engine will be diesel only, though, and they will still offer the 6.7 Octane in 2027CY and going forward as well. (Until at least 29CY when their chart ended....LOL.) In addition, there will not be a B6.7N (natural gas) in 27CY but there is supposed to be a B6.7 Propane instead. That being said, the natural gas/propane programs are always more at risk for changes/cancellations so we'll see.

Sorry when I said "7L" I was referring to the 6.7L. We always leave out the decimal when talking engine sizes and I rounded up. LOL....(Since the B6.7 is the only engine we sell that actually has a decimal point in its name unlike L9, X12, X15, etc.) As far as I know it will be available for Freightliner dealers beginning January 26CY. It's been a few months since we were told that, though and I haven't heard of any updates to that (good or bad) since then. So I guess we'll see. It will be August 2025 before we get our official 26CY volume allocation and component availability information and that is when we'd know for sure on this topic.

That competitive advantage is going to be gone soon, though. The gasoline Cummins (their next 7-liter engine program) is on the way and will be here in about a year. I believe the plan is for Freightliner to have it in 26CY but not sure about the other OEM's...

That's a shame, was a good website. They already changed the format of the website today and not for the better IMO. There are fewer articles for one thing...

You only live once.....get the Raptor! I'm actually looking at one for myself now. I'm in a pickle, though, as I can get one at D-Plan (or dealer cost if D-Plan is not allowed) if I order one, but with Ford's ordering chaos and horrific communication not sure I want to deal with that again. On the other side, I could buy one off the lot but right now you're lucky to get a Ranger Raptor for under MSRP. Many dealers are marking them up $5K over MSRP at the moment. Oh the dilemma.....

It was shocking to me how inefficient our purchasing organization was. Even today, one of my best friends is still a Purchasing Manager there and the stories he tells....oh boy. (I did not meet him at Ford - we met in grad school and he actually worked at another company prior to joining Ford. I was not BFF's with many of the purchasing folks I worked with...LOL...) The contracts we did seemed meaningless, too. We spent all this time trying to get them done, even physically driving over to the purchasing building to chase purchasing folks down to get them done (because some of them wouldn't return phone calls/emails), and yet even with all that legal-ese in them it really didn't matter. Both Ford and the suppliers would change terms on the fly with seemingly no recourse either way.

They already have multiple suppliers. Problem is the "good" suppliers are not North American and most of them have caps on how many units they well sell to Ford. I remember the "Denso Project" we worked on. We were willing to essentially pay for the cost of a new plant for them (buried into the piece price) to give us 400,000 more alternators per year and they still wouldn't do it. (Due to backlash/consequences from the homeland - both from government and from Toyota/Honda.) They "can't live with higher costs in exchange for future warrant costs", either. They would if they could. Right now a North American supplier widget is $300/ea and an Asian supplier widget is $250/ea with better quality. (But again, you can't get more of these.) You're stuck. Insourcing is honestly a potential idea IMO now that the spinoffs of Visteon/Delphi are in the rear view mirror. (And they are past any UAW issues there.) We talked about this when I was working there but it was about setting up shops in Turkey, India or Mexico for new component plants. We could not get competitive doing it in the US so those 3 countries (at the time) were considered the best non-SE Asian low-cost options that could handle it. Aside from that, Ford could make relations better if they stopped being late on all their checkpoints, having so much red tape / layers that bogs down the system, had better Purchasing management, etc. It's embarrassing you are paying Purchasing Managers pretty darn good money yet they can't buy a paper clip without 3 other Purchasing folks to sign off on it. Maybe it's better now but when I was in Product Development working with purchasing was extremely difficult. I still have several good friends who are higher up in Ford Purchasing now and they still complain about the same things we dealt with 10-20 years ago. (Everyone blames the finance guys and they really don't have much input on any of the decisions. They just provide the cost scorecard for the whole truck. The Chief Engineer / Program Manager are the ones who decide what cost tradeoffs to make.)

This is nothing new....this has been going on for 30 years. Here is the problem: Just like how Ford's costs are higher than their competitors (UAW wages, legacy healthcare pension costs, higher taxes, etc) the same goes for the US suppliers. Given everyone knows that, and the pressure from shareholders to get the costs down, it forces the OEM's to source things outside of US/Canada when possible. So Ford would call someone like Denso to get prices on alternators, and Denso says we will sell you alternators for $XXX but we can only give you so many of them. Most Asian suppliers are still tied up with their respective OEM's (Keiretsu) so there are limits on how much business they are allowed to do with Ford/GM. (On my F-150 program, Denso said they would only sell us 100,000 alternators a year. We needed 550,000....) Then Ford calls their domestic supplier for alternators and they get a quote for 20% more (if you're lucky) than what Denso will sell them for. So Ford then pounds on the domestic supplier to get the costs down and that causes tension between the two. Often times, the domestic supplier will slide in a hidden design change to lessen their cost. (Which also can impact quality.) Other times the domestic supplier will go ahead and lower the price somewhat but then when the annual COLA/inflationary price increase is established the supplier will hammer them with a higher yearly increase over what Denso gave them. At this point, neither side can back out of the deal since the supplier facility, tooling, contracts are already in-place. You carry on as unhappy spouses who sleep in separate rooms. So Ford is pissed they are paying so much more per piece for crappier alternators, and the domestic supplier is pissed because they aren't making what they want and having to fight with Ford over every nickel and dime. So round and round it goes. It's not Ford's issue and it's not the domestic supplier issue, either. Both are just trying to make a decent profit, but both of them are not where they want to be so it's a constant tug-o-war between them. This is a "USA" issue....until we force a level playing field with the Asian countries Ford and GM will continue to be behind when it comes to costs/margins on like-vehicles.

2 issues for me: 1) That piece below the grill/headlights just looks weird to me. They took a chunk out of the headlights and ran that piece up into that area. I like the old look better but I've never been a fan of the crab claw lights of any sort. 2) These exterior refreshes are horrible investments. I know how much it costs to change front end designs and you do not get the incremental revenue to ever make up for it. It infuriates me when they do this and the overall change is so minor most people won't even notice. Why bother.....when I was working in Product Development back in the day many of us were vocal about doing too many minor refreshes that never really made sense.

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.