Ford has forgotten who the customers are

[Naranjita]

Read a story this morning in my Google feed about Union Pacific labor shortages. That doesn't help. Probably explains why my rail car hasn't moved in a week.

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[jtpc2021]

Rail lines exist all over the country. They stop at many depots along the way. You don't need to have a fully loaded train of Mavericks to make the logistics work. They are all going to be loaded onto trucks before being delivered at dealers anyway and it's not like dealers are receiving full loads of Mavericks on trucks. People need to stop making excuses for multibillion dollar corporations. There are plenty of more competitive industries that make it work just fine. You can order just about anything you want and have it delivered in a couple days, except a car...

You ever tried to unload a train that is over a mile long? They only unload vehicle trains a specific yards.

And yes, it is totally possible to deliver vehicles to all the dealerships, which Ford does.

It is just more efficient right now to strategically allocate by region and dealership size rather than first-come basis.

 

[brnpttmn]

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.

Congrats. That's maybe a few minutes worth of what Ford ships, so let me know when you've shipped hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year to thousands of locations, and then let me know if that changes anything.

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.

Not if you're considering the entire process and manufacturing priorities (e.g., parts availability, manufacturing efficiency, etc), and want the Maverick at its current MSRP.

Also, I must have missed it when Ford said that they would be filling orders FIFO. Or maybe that didn't actually happen.

 

[brnpttmn]

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.

 

[whtnrdy]

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.

No, they can't. And neither can the military.

You keep insisting that the military using government funding to ship, ahem, 100s of vehicles to various bases is similar to Ford's entire logistical chain of selling, building and delivering 100,000s vehicles to private individuals in a competitive private market environment without explaining how they are similar.

Just as has been said already, you are just upset that Ford is prioritizing efficiency and cost over ordering sequence.

 

[LAClippers420]

Someone needs a snickers bar.

 

[brnpttmn]

You keep insisting that the military using government funding to ship vehicles to various bases is similar to Ford's entire logistical chain of selling, building and delivering vehicles to private individuals in a competitive private market environment without explaining how they are similar.

Just as has been said already, you are just upset that Ford is prioritizing efficiency and cost over ordering sequence.

"They could be just as efficient and still honor a customer order priority"

No, they can't. And neither can the military.

Fast. Cheap. Good. Choose two.

 

[JKinPA]

For me it came down to my money. I called three local dealers and asked if they could match Chapman’s offer. They all said that they couldn’t. I would have gone with them had any matched the price. They didn’t even counter, I would have considered something close. Bottom line is that I work for my money and I would rather pay as little as possible and keep the rest. Simple family economics. If any of the local dealers had offered what Chapman did, they would have sold hundreds just like Chapman. I drove 3 hours round trip and I would every day to save almost $2400. Worked for me.

 

[whtnrdy]

It is absolutely no different. I as an individual in the military coordinated directly with rail and trucking companies to get my equipment shipped across the country with only a few weeks notice. The "military" didn't do it for me. I had a specific budget allocated to accomplish this and had to load and unload my vehicles in person directly. Ford has employees that do the same. It really isn't that complicated. You put it out for bids. You get responses. You hire companies. You load cargo. It gets transported. There is no reason to complicate the matter by pretending it is more than that.

Again, you are only talking about the shipping part while ignoring everything else.

 

[JibbersCrabst]

Allocating by order date only would make everyone have to wait longer in a market where there is a raw material shortage. From what I can tell, it seems Ford is building vehicles based on what materials they are able to get. So if someone orders a truck in June that will require materials that aren't available at the start of production, everyone who ordered after them has to wait? That's both unfair, and bad for business. "First come first serve" would work fine in a world where Ford has all the materials they need to build every truck readily available but even then it doesn't make logistical sense. It makes more sense to build similar vehicles in batches for efficiency purposes even if there isn't a shortage of materials.

The wining on here is getting unbearable.

 

[whtnrdy]

Allocating by order date only would make everyone have to wait longer in a market where there is a raw material shortage. From what I can tell, it seems Ford is building vehicle based on what materials they are able to get. So if someone orders a truck in June that will require materials that aren't available at the start of production, everyone who ordered after them has to wait? That's both unfair, and bad for business. "First come first serve" would work fine in a world where Ford has all the materials they need to build every truck readily available but even then it doesn't make logistical sense. It makes more sense to build similar vehicles in batches for efficiency purposes even if there isn't a shortage of materials.

The wining on here is getting unbearable.

They would have to wait longer and pay more.

 

[JKinPA]

It is absolutely no different. I as an individual in the military coordinated directly with rail and trucking companies to get my equipment shipped across the country with only a few weeks notice. The "military" didn't do it for me. I had a specific budget allocated to accomplish this and had to load and unload my vehicles in person directly. Ford has employees that do the same. It really isn't that complicated. You put it out for bids. You get responses. You hire companies. You load cargo. It gets transported. There is no reason to complicate the matter by pretending it is more than that.

Recently?
I work in logistics and as long as others will pay more, your freight sits
Not enough drivers and equipment shortages. Way different now than it was a couple of years ago. Budgets have been bashed everywhere.
I deal with it every day, you have to pay if you want to play if you can even get it off the ship but that’s another story.

 

[Area51BS]

This might be why the wait is so long. Employees watching an F150 trying to pull the rail cars.

 

[brnpttmn]

There were 5000 Mavericks delivered in the first month of shipments total. Not hundreds of thousands...The process for getting train cars and trucks to make shipments is not nearly as complicated as many of you are making it out to be. If you have stuff to ship, you ship it. It is up the companies that do the shipping, not Ford, to get it where it needs to go. There is nothing really to coordinate other than we need lots of trains cars from the plant in Mexico to the US when we are in production.

Production was the constraint there. Ford also has to ship Bronco sports from the same factory, or do they just magically "call" a different shipper for those? They will ship more than 100,000 units (most of which were custom ordered) out of the Hermosilla plant this year to more than 4000 locations. They'd never be able to do that if they built and shipped FIFO. Especially not at the price of the maverick.

 

[Mag Maverick]

Hey Turtle I agree 100% with you I ordered my Maverick on August 10th from a small dealership and West Tennessee they are good people real good people to make a long story short they whoever controls the allocations district manager branch manager whoever the heck it is for giving out
allocation has not given them one not one retail allocation NADA no zip zap nothing the only thing they have got is 2 stock allocation one which was sold about a month ago and one which is coming in any day now but it's just not their dealership I talked to other dealerships in are area they have not got none either Zip Zap noneing what the heck's going on I know West Tennessee is a very sparsely populated area there's only 7 million people in the whole state but we put our pants on just like everybody else does in the United States and Canada it's the little people that are the backbone of this country made from our Blood Sweat and Tears to the best country in the world I know we got some problems but Ford needs to wake up just think of every small dealership that is a Ford dealership changed over to Chevy Chrysler or some other brand that would break Ford sorry I seem very upset but it's just not right I have talked to Ford myself I called a lady there yesterday very nice very kind but she could not do nothing for me I've talked to the sales manager I've talked to my saleesman I've talked to other dealerships it's the same way around West Tennessee so like I said before I agree 100% with you turtle couple days ago I posted an engine and a caboose and I understand there's always going to be an engine # 1 and I guess I'm the Caboose Last hopefully I'll get mine before summer is here to all my brothers and sisters safe driving and a very Merry Christmas to you all.

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