Toward the end of January, Ford Motor Co. shut down production of the 2024 Ford F-150 at both plants due to a supplier parts issue. The F-150 production stop resulted in layoffs affecting nearly 10k employees. The big question we have: Will this push back customer deliveries of the refreshed truck?
[Related content: 2021-2024 Ford F-150 known problems]
The story, reported on and confirmed by the Detroit Free Press, states that the Dearborn Truck plant was closed from Jan. 25 through Jan. 31, and the Kansas City Assembly Plant was down from Jan 25. To Feb 1.
Though Ford spokespeople have declined to state which part or which supplier was responsible for the F-150 production stop, they have confirmed that the shutdown is over.
What the F-150 production stop means for customers
Hopefully nothing. We’ve reached out to Ford to see if the F-150 production stop will affect customer deliveries, and at the time of posting this article, we haven’t received a reply.
The Detroit Free Press article mentions that the production for the F-150 Lighting was also halted between Jan. 25 and Jan. 31 because the Dearborn Truck paint plant services both gas and electric trucks. That’s probably less of a big deal since production of the electric truck was already scheduled to be halved for 2024 anyway.
Ford F-150 sales slide?
Order banks for the 2024 model year opened in September, and production began in mid-December for the refreshed truck. But so-far Ford has been a wishy-washy on when deliveries would begin. In fact, this affected our decision to buy a 2025 Ram 1500.
When we reached out to Ford, asking for a clear delivery date on Jan. 25 (unbeknownst to us that an F-150 production stop was underway), the response was: “It will start shipping to dealers soon.”
This also appears to be affecting sales of the F-150 as people wait for the 2024 model to hit dealers. From December 2023 to January 2024, F-Series sales dropped by about 6k units.
The bottom line
We’ll update this story if and when we hear back from our Ford spokesperson about how the stoppage will affect deliveries. But if you’re waiting on your new truck and have an anticipated delivery date, maybe add a couple weeks to that.
