Ford Ripped for Pickup Quality

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 11, 8:30AM EDT

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Ford Ripped for Pickup Quality — © shaunl / iStock Unreleased via Getty Images

Ford admits it has a product quality issue it will fix. This is not going well, at least in recent reports. (These are the best- and worst-built cars in America.)
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According to Reuters, “As part of a new approach to stamping out quality demons, Kentucky Truck Plant manager Joseph Closurdo said he stopped production for as long as three days earlier this year.” The product with the trouble was the Super Duty pickup, on which Ford can make a small fortune.
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Unfortunately, it took assembly line workers to find the problem. It should have been detected earlier by product and engineering management. Another setback was caused because they did not do their jobs.

Ford Authority exemplifies how the media manhandles Ford for quality problems. Its reporters wrote that plant management “shut down Ford Super Duty production for periods as long as three days earlier this year, which allowed 300 quality inspectors, suppliers, and engineers to fix faulty parts that workers discovered while assembling the refreshed pickup using cameras stationed all over the plant.” Three hundred is a lot of people.
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Ford’s new production problem is one in a long line of similar issues. These have included other pickup products, particularly Ford’s new F-150 Lightning, which suffered from engine fires. Ford management has pointed out that other car manufacturers have fire problems. That is hardly a reasonable excuse. Ford either makes quality products or it doesn’t.
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Ford’s recent earnings showed its financial health is solid and should be for the balance of the year. However, it is in uncharted water as it pushes further into the electric vehicle future. With heavy competition in this arena, the company cannot afford more mistakes.

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.