Ford Restarts F-150 Production

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 11:30PM EST · Published May 16, 4:33PM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Ford Restarts F-150 Production — © Ford Motor Co.

After a fire took a supplier of parts for Ford’s (NYSE: F) F-150 offline and worried investors that the company’s No.1 selling vehicle by far would face falling inventories, the company announced that production is coming back online

The company’s comment:

Ford Motor Company is restarting production of the popular F-150 at Dearborn Truck Plant Friday after just over one week of downtime. The company has also successfully repaired the supply chain for Super Duty, with production targeted to restart by Monday at the Kentucky Truck Plant as well as the Kansas City Assembly Plant that also makes F-150 pickups.

This follows the massive May 2 fire at the Meridian Magnesium Products facility in Eaton Rapids, Mich.

“While the situation remains extremely dynamic, our teams are focused on returning our plants to full production as fast as possible,” said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president, Global Operations. “The ramp-up time to full production is improving every day.”

And, most importantly:

Inventories of Ford’s best-selling F-Series pickups and other vehicles remain strong and customers won’t have a problem finding the model they want.

The F-Series accounts for almost 40% of Ford’s unit sales in the U.S. and has been the top selling vehicle in America for decades. The full-sized pick-up market is highly competitive. GM’s (NYSE: GM) Chevy Silverado is the second best selling vehicle in the U.S. Fiat Chrysler’s (NYSE: FCAU) Ram is often in third place.

Investors have already been worried that Ford is behind the curve in cost management and new age technologies which include autonomously controlled vehicles. Ford said it would eliminate all but two car models in the U.S. where sales of sedans have been falling across the entire industry as crossover, SUV, and pick-up sales boom.

At least Ford shareholder will have one less thing to worry about

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.