iamweasel
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Posts posted by iamweasel
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1 hour ago, 7Mary3 said:
That plant will likely be building the Chevy-branded LCF trucks too. Ought to make Chevy commercial truck dealers happy.
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.
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13 hours ago, 7Mary3 said:
Yes, I am wondering about the L9N going forward. Looks like it will eventually get replaced by a CNG version of the X10. I was hearing Freightliner was to eventually manufacture their own Cummins derived engines, is that still the plan?
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...
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4 hours ago, 7Mary3 said:
I heard talk of a new 7.2L Cummins, I was thinking maybe the 'Octane' would be based on that engine if the rumors are true. CARB27 and EPA27 are going to make things very interesting and it looks like there may be a return to gasoline in the medium duty world. GM was rumored to be working on an 8L gas engine for Navistar, I wonder what the status of that program is.
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.
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9 minutes ago, 7Mary3 said:
What, to eat camshafts and lifters? Doubt Freightliner would consider the 7.3L, it would likely have to be used a Ford transmission, either the 6R140 or 10R140. Nor do I see Ford wanting to sell the engine to Freightliner, unless maybe they dropped the 650 and 750. Freightlner already uses the GM L8T with a 2000 series Allison in the FCCC chassis models. Some of you may remember back in the early 90's Freightliner offered both the 5.9L V-8 and 8L V-10 out of the Rams in the 'Business Class' medium duty trucks. Not many were built, the Chrysler automatic the gas engine came with didn't hold up.
I don't know what is going on with the Cummins 'Octane' gasoline 6.7L. It's still on the Cummins website like it's available, but I know of no OEM that offers it. I have heard sketchy rumors there were some development issues, program was dropped, engineers reassigned, program was revived, still had issues, etc... No idea if there is any truth to it. So now the 'Octane' is part of the 7L program? First I have heard of that, but it makes sense.
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.
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11 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:
If there is any silver lining to this I believe Ford with F-600, 650 and 750 has a competitive edge with their gas powered versions. Now if they would just add air brakes to the 650 and 750 that would increase their competitiveness.
Can't understand why this hasn't been done years ago.
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...
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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...
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2 hours ago, akirby said:
I’m torn between picking a cheaper used 2020 ish Supercab or biting the bullet and picking up a 2024 crew cab (maybe even a Raptor) in a couple of years. Guess I have 2 years to figure it out.
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.....
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42 minutes ago, akirby said:
We have the same problem with our supply chain. I asked them to do a new contract for a new supplier and they told me I had to give them a previous contract for them to copy. I mean, you’re the contract organization and you don’t know how to write a new contract? If I could write the contract then I don’t need you. They just seem to be a pass through and not actively managing purchasing decisions.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.
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1 hour ago, akirby said:
I’m very familiar with that situation having worked outsourcing contracts for a couple of decades. Feuding spouses who are mad at each other but still have to live together. I disagree that Ford has no choices. They could get multiple suppliers (yes that causes more work but it also means you’re not solely dependent on one supplier). They could just live with the slightly higher cost and cut other areas or just live with the higher costs in exchange for fewer warranty costs in the future (but we both know managers prefer to focus on short term cost not long term cost). They could approach it as more of a partnership with shared goals, shared costs and shared gains rather than adversaries. Give them incentives for good performance.
Maybe they need to insource more parts or do more joint ventures with US suppliers. Solutions are out there but it’s easier to just beat up the suppliers. And the beatings will continue until morale improves.
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.)
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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.
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On 5/20/2024 at 11:50 AM, joseodiaga4 said:
Refreshed (and modified?) Ford Mavericks caught undisguised on public roads
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.
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On 4/3/2024 at 10:41 AM, Bob Rosadini said:
Check this out...https://mart.cummins.com/imagelibrary/data/assetfiles/0072230.pdf
Looks like Ford's unique position of having the only gasoline power for class 6 and 7 is over. And unlike Ford, you can bet International, F.liner, and Paccar will offer this motor with an air compressor! Will it cost more than a 7.3 Godzilla? I'm sure. Will customers be willing to pay a premium? Im sure.
I can tell you with certainty Freightliner has already signed up for it.
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On 2/19/2024 at 10:49 AM, silvrsvt said:
XLT is most likely just going to be used on truck products and Active for CUV products
ST-lIne is just the look of an ST, not the performance that the ST name has.
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.
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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.
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On 2/16/2024 at 6:30 PM, jpd80 said:
Not meaning to argue your point
As I understand it, all Ford vehicles come with MSRP set by Ford but includes incentives,
be that 0% financing or varying degrees of cash incentive. In good times, neither of those
incentives are applied and in fact we’ve just exited a nasty period of dealer mark ups.
Normally, there’s no incentives on a new Model Year while the previous MY is being cleared,
I know that like duh but sometimes needs repeating, especially when run out stock is actually
extremely low or nonexistent, there’s no need for Ford to push any incentives….
Where dealers get stuck with stock that just won’t sell, Ford will eventually offer dealers
a final payment, a specific incentive amount that normally guarantees quick sale.
So that lower non-negotiable price you mentioned has a whole bunch of caveats attached
and is exactly why dealers don’t normally make much on new vehicle sales save for ADMs.
It would help at ton if Ford actually did what you advise and set a “fixed lower non-negotiable
price” guaranteeing dealers a better margin on sales but unfortunately Ford doesn’t do that…
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.
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12 minutes ago, Footballfan said:
That may be true, but most engineers and designers never spent a day on the line- they were hired right out of college.
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.)
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48 minutes ago, Footballfan said:
If you want to talk greed, let's start at the CEO level. The engineer or designer works in a nice air conditioned office, sits in a comfy chair all day, and can walk out of the office at the end of a workday without any aches or pains. I have the highest respect for those folks on the line who come in every day and do their jobs.
And those folks on the line have every opportunity to get that engineering or designer job if they want.
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1 hour ago, akirby said:
Of course they could implement a detailed tracking system but you’re talking about 2 million vehicles per year on multiple railroads and who knows how many individual local transport companies so getting everyone to scan the vehicles or putting IOT trackers on them would be difficult and expensive.Do all vehicles come with cell modems now? If so then maybe they could use that for vehicle tracking at very little added cost.
But even if they had tracking it’s still the local transport that screwed up not Ford although Ford is obviously ultimately responsible. And it’s still a terrible idea to close a sale before the vehicle is at the dealership.
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.)
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2 hours ago, akirby said:
Also those cheaper vehicles bring much smaller profit margins. But early adopters with cheaper BEVs will do well until the competition ramps up.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.
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7 hours ago, tbone said:
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.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.
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.
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9 hours ago, ice-capades said:
Ford has had communication and reputation problems with its Dealers for decades. There are far too many management layers causing decisions made for job and career preservation instead of what's right for the company long-term including its customers and shareholders. On the sales side, the Dealers are the end customer with the Ford Zone Managers primary role being to sell inventory and allocation to Dealers. The order scheduling is not random and relies primarily on dealership management of its USOB (Unscheduled Order Bank). Unfortunately, few dealerships monitor or manage their USOB effectively. Much of this is due to unqualified staff and managers involved and simply telling their retail order customers what they think they want to hear.
Many or most Dealers don't realize or fail to utilize the resources available to them regarding retail order management and scheduling. Ford issues almost daily updates regarding commodity restraints and supply chain issues but most Dealers don't review or ignore these resources which can cause the dealership to lose scheduling allocation for both retail customer and stock orders. The priority code and scheduling process works. If Dealer don't know ow to do their job, it's not Ford fault. Dealership incompetence is not an excuse!
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.
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4 hours ago, akirby said:
Once the transport company picks it up then it’s out of Ford’s hands. It’s still super risky even if it’s on a truck 5 minutes away. I know Ford has issues but this is t all their fault.
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.
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14 minutes ago, 7Mary3 said:
Hino? Did they ever come back?
From a fleet perspective I would have to say Ford is the least cooperative OEM as well. Recalls galore, parts on intergalatic backorder, long delivery times. It's not the dealers either. Ford did manage to get us some E-Transits, probably because they have a bunch somewhere and can't get rid of them.
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.)
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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.
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New Light & Medium Duty News
in Ford Motor Company Discussion Forum
Posted
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.