Ford F-150 Production Grinds to Virtual Halt

Ford F-150 Production Grinds to Virtual Halt

By Bill Visnic

Ford Motor Co. said Friday the Michigan Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, that makes the F-Series will effectively be idled for the entire third quarter. The Kansas City, Missouri, plant that also assembles the F-Series will be dormant for most of the same period, although it will begin single-shift production late in the third quarter of the redesigned '09 F-150.

The tactic is part of Ford's strategy to drastically reduce stocks of the current F-150 prior to the start of production for the substantially revised '09 model late this year -- and to avoid further bloating of inventories of the current model in light of seriously flagging light-truck demand in the U.S.

Ford Director of U.S. Sales Analysis George Pipas said that at the end of July, Ford's entire inventory was 499,000 units -- and about half of that total was F-Series pickups. By contrast, just 5 percent of the company's current inventory is the Focus compact car.

Ford announced in June that it would delay by two months the launch of the new '09 F-150, and the company was reducing production of pickups and SUVs by some 900,000 units in response to the deteriorating light-truck market.

Photo by Ford

Ford is curtailing almost all production of the current best-selling F-150 to reduce inventories in anticipation of the launch for the redesigned '09 model seen here.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.