Stockpile of Unfinished Ford Super Duty Pickups Missing Chips Is Now Visible from Space

This is an article from May 2021. Correct we are in November yet many OEMs still cant get chips. So do we follow the Silk Road to commerce?

So an automated chip factory cannot continue despite the 2020 Covid-19 lock down? Strange but true? I used to be an SQE for GM Powertrain. I reported to Worldwide Purchasing in Michigan and have visited 1000's of manufacturing facilities located throughout the world. Much of the Car and Truck is automated as use of a human being is minimal. Chips? So you think they have a former seamstress putting those together. Nope. All computerized manufacturing.

So what about those raw materials necessary to make the chips. Somewhat similar. So I guess we would have to follow the trail back to just where those chips are manufactured. Asia Pacific? I don't know as Fords supply base is treated as similar as the USA is to national security.

So. Once the chips arrive and the trucks roll just what will happen to the OEM and aftermarket prices. They should fall. But, in this day and age WHO knows? Hmm, WHO?

So here we go:

Stockpile of Unfinished Ford Super Duty Pickups Missing Chips Is Now Visible from Space

t's no secret that the global chip shortage is wreaking havoc on automakers; even chip-hoarding Toyota is starting to feel the heat. Stellantis, Ford, GM—pretty much everybody is getting a taste of a major supply-chain shortcoming, and needless to say, it's bad for business. But just because vehicles need chips to be delivered doesn't mean you have to stop making 'em altogether. Case-in-point, Ford is still making trucks; it's just making them without the necessary bits, holding them until the chips finally come in, and then shipping them out to dealers. Ford is doing this with what looks like thousands of vehicles, and you can see the results from space.

a reply to: Waterglass


Where are all the red and blue trucks? Most look white.

One catches fire, and they all go up in flames?

Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, but I think the lockdowns may have something to do with the chip shortage.

a reply to: carewemust

Possibly Ford gets their automotive paints from Sherwin Williams. Could that be the same plant in Texas whose pipes froze when the energy grid collapsed in early 2020.

All I know is that I cant get Sherwin Williams paint in the color pigments I need to finish my home remodeling. They told me the reconditioned plant will start up in December. Possibly paint by March 2022.

I am betting '21-'24 Fords will be like the '67-'72 Chevy C-10.
They will all have interchangeable parts
with only minor Trim embellishments to distinguish between years.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Nah, but Cole I offer a piece of Coal to you as a gesture of goodwill. You read about global Coal shortage right? Somethings off there also as look at how ARCH Coal mines coal in USA. Correct open pit and or strip mining that has one guy per truck socially distanced from the world.

Rest of world mines via similar methods.

In brief very low potential to get COVID-19 or variant. My opinion. So why is it shut down and why a shortage. Too convenient

Do they have gun racks in the back window?

It could be an effort to slow or stop self propelled gun cases form being delivered.

a reply to: Waterglass

It's actually a feature, EMP will fry those chips and stop almost all petrol engines but a good old fashioned diesel will keep on ticking, not the new electronics bound versions but the old ones that were once found in all heavy duty vehicles and a lot of cars as well.

Most of those old vehicles are scrapped by today, a shame as they can keep a nation running when petrol engines and sensitive electronics are fried well and properly.

Why is ford continuing to waste resources in this manner, what is going on.

A redesign sounds like it is in order to compensate for this lack of components and if they can't do that perhaps they should see if they can find some elderly motor vehicle designers who actually know what they are doing.

Relying on the likes of China is giving China power they should not have, we have to relearn self reliance and perhaps put a few of those corporate heads whom trashed our industry's to invest there for there own greed behind bars were they should have been all along as the traitors they always were.

The US relying on China after building them up is like the tale of the Hare and the Scorpion.

"Why did you sting me" said the dying rabbit as they were only half way across the river, "well both drown now" and the scorpion replied "I could not help it you see it's my nature".

The US demise would or WILL also be China's demise despite what China assumes wrongly to be the case that they will then flower, instead they too will drown.

There ARE simpler larger scale IC's that CAN be made without all those rare earth minerals, yes they are not as energy efficient and not as tiny or quick but they CAN be made and do the job, there are also alternative sources of those rare earth minerals and I am absolutely certain there are deposits somewhere within the continental United States, they may be more expensive to extract but they are definitely there just not as close to the surface and the same for Europe and Africa, relying on Asia with it's cannibal communists is a stupid move, as stupid as the proverbial lemmings running off of a proverbial cliff.

a reply to: Waterglass

Thanks for replying. I hope Kentucky doesn't get too much rain this year and early next year. Imagine taking possession of a truck with a rusting undercarraige/exhaust system.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: Waterglass


Where are all the red and blue trucks? Most look white.

One catches fire, and they all go up in flames?

Most trucks are white. Most vehicles are white, especially fleet vehicles, which are often trucks.

The pickup truck is also the most common vehicle driven by millionaires.

I couldn't afford to buy a Ford superduty pickup anyway. We do have our social security, but if we were to buy one new truck at sixty grand, we would not have much reserve left in our savings if something happened. as it is, we took out a loan for part of the Subaru forester instead of paying cash. This year we had a new furnace put in by a furnace contractor, stuff like that is more important than buying a newer truck than I have. I presently have a 1987 Chevy silverado with thirty three thousand miles on it for the plow truck, I will stick with that till it gets too rusty to drive. It actually has less rust than a 2000 pickup usually has. Good enough for me, I like it when a vehicle has the little vent windows on the doors and crank up windows. When my grandson in law got into the truck one day when I hauled some stuff to the monthly city household home cleanup dumpsite, he couldn't figure out how to open the window and asked how to open the vent windows. Well, I suppose I cannot play video games online so we will call it a whitewash.

a reply to: Waterglass


simple enough solution, is to make them so their not dependent on chips to run. worked for a hundred years, could work a hundred more. put on the hundred mile carburetor and there ya go.

but that will never happen

originally posted by: TomCollin
a reply to: Waterglass


simple enough solution, is to make them so their not dependent on chips to run. worked for a hundred years, could work a hundred more. put on the hundred mile carburetor and there ya go.

but that will never happen

No, it won't.

My understanding is these trucks are fully functional- they simply lack a computer chip that is required to get these trucks to meet emissions standards. Something about cutting off the fuel supply to pairs of cylinders when not under load.
Without meeting emissions standards, the vehicles can't legally be sold- so they sit and wait for either the chips to come back in stock, or for the emissions policies to be relaxed.
The reee's would be heard from space if we relaxed the emissions standards, so the trucks will sit and wait for the chips to come in.
At that point I expect them not to relax pricing even though there will be a glut of new trucks... instead I expect another 'cash for clunkers' government deal to come through and clear out the last of the good, old, reliable vehicles off the road.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: Waterglass

Thanks for replying. I hope Kentucky doesn't get too much rain this year and early next year. Imagine taking possession of a truck with a rusting undercarraige/exhaust system.

If thems anything like Fords we get in the UK one way or another your gonna be getting some sort of issues with them. They gone backwards with quality over the past twenty / thirty years.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Remember when Obama proxie bought alot of the old vehicles and scrapped them?

a reply to: carewemust

It's already been an issue unfortunately. Something my team has to deal with. Surface rust is not usually covered under warranty on undercarriage parts, only corrosion. But as a consumer myself, I would not want to spend 80 grand on a truck that has rust before I take delivery. We're still in the many web ex meetings phase.

a reply to: Waterglass

Ah, the American motor industry. Overproducing again. Most other industries would have figured it out and use some 'OldTech™' to still make valid sales and not go bust.

True US unnovation.

Intel could tool up and mfg. those chips in a couple of months. But Ford won't sign the contracts so Intel continues to make cell phone and other car chips for the international market. That's what my fishing partner tells me who is a contract worker for intel.

Capitalism...

originally posted by: carewemust
Imagine taking possession of a truck with a rusting undercarraige/exhaust system.

Imagine taking possession of a year-old "new" truck, full price, that's sat several months waiting for parts.

Why did Ford build that many that far ahead, unless the trucks are already sold to fleets?

originally posted by: TomCollin
a reply to: Waterglass


simple enough solution, is to make them so their not dependent on chips to run. worked for a hundred years, could work a hundred more. put on the hundred mile carburetor and there ya go.

but that will never happen

You never know, but it might. If the chips stay absent, FORD might just re-engineer them to go without and you never know, but they might be a saving grace as the only things reliable through a nuclear war.