Ford has forgotten who the customers are

[olderbudwiser]

Ford is not in the business to make friends...sadly I guess. They are in the business to make $$$$$. Pay their bills, make stockholders happy, appease the UAW and pay the salaried employees. If after all this if the buying public is happy well OK.

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[whtnrdy]

I am just replying to responses. The assembly line is regularly shut down and hybrid orders which they build have been sitting around for months anyway. So it would seem their entire logistics process sucks anyway. I'm not sure how building customer orders could be any worse.

But I am honestly tired of arguing with people like you that just resort to personal attacks and trolling without providing anything but short little troll responses. Congratulations you win. Now go see daddy Ford for your good boy points.

You said that the entirety of what Ford does and what you did are "absolutely no different". Disagreeing with you is not a personal attack or trolling.

 

[jtpc2021]

I don't need to have unloaded mile long trains to know it is possible to honor a customer order priority. I am not aware of a single Ford dealer that receives their cars via train. They are all loaded onto car carrier trucks. A car carrier truck can deliver a vehicle anywhere with a road. Dealers are completely unecessary.

Isn’t it upsetting when you realize life isn’t fair and the world doesn’t revolve around getting everyone what they want, when they want it.

That horrible feeling of not having control over the circumstance.

It is what it is. You can complain to Ford, if that makes you feel like you are accomplishing something and regaining some form of control in the situation.

 

[8211badger]

I have shipped hundreds of vehicles via aircraft, rail, and commerical trucking all around the country and world in the military many times. It is not as difficult as you make it seem. I am not just whining. It is very possible to do. Sears and Roebuck made it work just fine in the 1800s via locomotive. Surely a multibillion dollar company in 2021 should be able to figure it out. They could be just as efficient and still honor a customer order priority, you know like they said they would. Shipping more vehicles to big dealers first so they can mark them up thousands of dollars each is not the only way to produce and sell vehicle in modern times. It was a purposeful decision that has nothing to do with logistics constraints. They had many thousands of customer orders of every possible combination of models and options before the first vehicle was even started on the production line. They had likely already secured transportation contracts as well. There may be some far out the way locations that could experience some delivery delays, but 99% of the customers that ordered Mavericks were in locations where logistics are not a problem.

Found the guy responsible for this very fast delivery.

 

[whtnrdy]

From a shipping perspective, it's not. They are charging one of the highest destination charges in the industry. They can afford it.

We aren't discussing only the "shipping perspective." You keep ignoring the selling and building part, as if they these two parts of the chain are completely unrelated to shipping with respect to total efficiency and cost.

And if they built and shipped in order of purchase, it would be even more expensive.

 

[Big_T]

Ford is not in the business to make friends...sadly I guess. They are in the business to make $$$$$. Pay their bills, make stockholders happy, appease the UAW and pay the salaried employees. If after all this if the buying public is happy well OK.

You left out OSHA, the EPA, and other government regulatory agencies.

 

[JibbersCrabst]

No one is saying they have to stop production because they can't build a speficic vehicle in order. That is just plain stupid. If they are building vehicles and shipping them to dealers first that are identical to customer order that are still waiting for build dates after ording in June or July, that is a problem. This is exactly what has happened. I don't care that hybrid orders are delayed, because ALL hybrid orders are delayed. But many dealers have received dealer stock and sold at huge markups while customers that ordered those exact same builds could have gotten theirs instead. Either way, Ford made the same profit per vehicle, but favored the dealers. It's not great in a capitalist economy to treat your end customers that way and tarnish your brand.

My point is that if you prioritize by order date in a market where raw materials are scarce, then the delays are likely to be even longer. I'm being a bit hyperbolic with my analogy but the OP was clearly saying "first come first serve" which means what it means. And yes, they did build a few thousand trucks at the beginning of production for dealer stock and that amounts to what, 1-2 per dealership? But honestly do we want those early ones? I'd prefer my late October build once they've had 2 months of experience.

 

[whtnrdy]

OK, you guys are either being purposely dense to be argumentative or just not understanding how it could be done. I am not saying they have to maintain a strict order of production line correlated directly to the customer order list. They can still bundle groups together and build similarly featured vehicles at the same time according to what parts they actually have on hand. What they shouldn't be doing is building and shipping identically spec'd vehicles that customers have ordered and shipping them for dealer stock instead. If I order a vehicle in June, I shouldn't see someone who orders months after me get delivered a vehicle with the identical spec as mine before me. They can have material delays, shipping delays, etc. at still honor a customer priority list. They are not doing that. There are people that ordered vehicles 6 months ago waiting for a build date, when they go into a dealer and buy that same vehicle today. There is something not right about that. But I am sure I just don't understand and Ford is doing the best they can...

While your first comment was indeed about dealer stock, you quickly abandoned that topic in your second comment. You didn't pivot back to dealer stock until 5 pages of comments later.

Your second comment, and reply to a comment that wasn't about dealer stock, that we all were arguing against:

"There is no reason that the person who orders first and gets produced first can't be in rural Alaska. Sure the delivery date may be later, but saying that people that live in more populated states should get first vehicles produced in ridiculous. The logistics of building the vehicles has nothing to do with where a customer lives."

 

[Mag Maverick]

Ladies and gentlemen I think maybe we've gone track a little bit here original post was about small dealerships not getting no allocations at all the majority of your post most of you I agree with but it's still in my opinion is not right that small mom and pop dealerships are not getting no allocations at all that's what I would like the answer to why are they not getting no allocations at all thank you

 

[A Dodge that drives Fords]

Been using my small local dealer for years. I like to shop locally when I can. He has 7 mav's ordered and I am #1 ordered 6/10. Been priority 10 since day one.
I will never go this route again, if it ain't on the lot I ain't buying it.
In fact if and when I do get my Mav I will drive it into the ground if I have to before I buy another vehicle.

Hell yeah!

 

[Turtle]

Ladies and gentlemen I think maybe we've gone track a little bit here original post was about small dealerships not getting no allocations at all the majority of your post most of you I agree with but it's still in my opinion is not right that small mom and pop dealerships are not getting no allocations at all that's what I would like the answer to why are they not getting no allocations at all thank you

I never intended this to be a logistics discussion just the allocation system. That everyone would get a chance to talk about it. This has gotten way out of control. Everyone chill, have a Pepsi and be KIND.

 

[MavVa1024]

This has been thoroughly entertaining.

 

[Naranjita]

Fast. Cheap. Good. Choose two.

Yeah, exactly! That's what they say in my industry. And sometimes I hear it said...

Quality, Quantity, Price, Schedule. Pick three, you can't have all four.​

But that's not as applicable in this instance. So yours is better. Ford isn't going to cut the quantity, they have to sell as many as they can for their numbers to work. They took the risk of all that money up front for engineering and assembly. So we really have your three metrics in play.

 

[Mymaverick2021]

I suggest that Ford rethink the dealer allocation system if they want to operate in a Customer Build retail world, The only ones that benefit are the large dealers and the folks that place the order via the small town Mom and Pop dealer has to wait. They need to allocate based on order date - the big dealers will still make a fortune but the smaller dealer will still have a chance to fulfill orders in a timely fashion. Whatever ever happened to first come - first served. I purchased (ordered) two new Fords this year and the Maverick ordered in July has not been assigned a delivery date. Let’s let Ford know what we think of their system. Agree or disagree that is up to you but please input your thoughts in this thread. Hopefully someone like @fordvideoguy can direct the brand manager to this thread.

This online build and order (through your dealer of choice) Is the wave of the future unfortunately we get to be the gunie pigs so that others may follow

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