March 2015 sales of Ford’s best-selling F-Series line of pickup trucks totaled 67,706 units, down 4.6 percent compared to March 2014. But that’s not worrying The Blue Oval’s executives that much, as the automaker isn’t planning on the sales slide lasting a long time.
“We are on schedule,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of the Americas, told Reuters in an interview. “Everything is going to plan very nicely.”
For one thing, the company’s Kansas City, Missouri plant is now producing the all-new 2015 F-150, becoming the second plant after the facility in Dearborn, Michigan to produce the new aluminum-bodied truck. But production of the new F-150 at the Kansas City plant will do more than supplement production. Not only will it produce all 2015 F-150 cab and model configurations, but it will also manufacture of F-150s with the 8-foot beds and heavy payload packages to meet demands of fleet buyers.
Hinrichs also said that that initial F-15o production has been tilted to meet retail customers, rather than fleets. As a result, retail sales are up while fleet sales are down. The divide between retail and fleet was even more pronounced in March, but businesses wishing to get the new F-150 into their fleets shouldn’t be worried, since the spread should begin to even out in the second quarter of 2015, as fleet customers start to see their orders met.
From a more general perspective, we’re sure Ford will do everything in its power to keep the 67-year-old F-Series line at the top of the overall sales heap for the 34th year in a row.
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