Do You Plan To Buy A New Truck In The Next Year?

[Trickymissfit]

I have seen those numbers as well BUT---always question them because there are a quite a few people such as myself who never participate in the surveys either by mail, phone or internet. Hell I have even had some of them send me cash through the mail lol. Several people that I do know will make it a point to fill out the surveys because it makes them feel better.

I did make a mistake above and it was an honest one. MB did buy back my 2000 ML55 AMG because of a transfer case module that they could not fix even – sucker would go into low range when stopped for no reason…..

To your point about union labor----the overhead structure includes the higher touch labor costs which in turn leave less resources ($$$$) for Engineering, Processes and Materials given a product that has to sell at a certain price point.

Everything is relative here because supporting the pensions and benefits of retirees at the levels they have to is still killing the big 3 in the marketplace. To top it off most of the people we are talking about are on the other side of the isle and support people I cannot. Like to vote with my pocketbook if you will.…

Wards is like the bible of the automotive industry. No matter where your plant is, it's tracked. They are the only ones who do true quality controll checks, and have a system setup that tracks them at zero miles, 10K, 25K, 50K and either 75K or 100K. Sometimes the model is so new that they can't get a check much past 10K or 25K, so you need to remember that point. They don't play with dollars or anything like that, and when they call out a spade everybody listens.

I've seen Wards do their engine engineering look thrus and give somebody the thumbs up, but then turn right around three to six months later and rip them apart. ( one that sticks in my mind was the first generation Duramax deisel engine.)

Wards does not have any alignment, and for years was big on Japanese products as well as some German stuff. But things constantly evolve, and some folks get complacent in their position. They will call you out on this issue alone. They were the ones that broke the AMG55 issues when Car & Driver and the others raved about them! I know two guys that bought them, and the first guy liked to never got rid of the thing. It averaged six months out of the year in the shop! The other guy has only had his a about six months, and I suspect it's broke as I have not seen it in quite awhile
gary

 

[redwolf1]

perhaps you need to dig in a little deeper with your statement. Ford is in good financil shape on the backs of the U.S. citizen. Ford out sources 70% of the parts, and the vast majority of that 70% are in China, Vietnam, and Malaysia. What do these three countries have in common? They hate us. Where as a G.M. product will at the minimum have a 65% in house content, and some are in the 90's. Once again that's jobs badly needed. Ford next to Navstar has bilked more suppliers out of money than any heavy manufacturer in North America. If you ever had to do any serious business with Ford, you'd soon learn to hate them (and I just kinda smoothed it over).

But most of all, I'll never own a Ford because I don't like Nazis, and anti-semites
gary

Don't know where you got this info, but if you're willing to do a little research
just google "most american parts content"

- Cars.com

I have two Fords now, plan on replacing them with two more w/in a year or so.

 

[Trickymissfit]

Don't know where you got this info, but if you're willing to do a little research
just google "most american parts content"

- Cars.com

I have two Fords now, plan on replacing them with two more w/in a year or so.

could care less where you get your data from. My data is right from the inside, and is common knowledge with the entire industry. But you don't even have to go very far to find out what's built where. Just jump in your car and drive over to your Ford dealer and look at the invoice sheet. It don't lie (by Federal Law). Your gonna have a hard time finding a Ford half ton that meets USA content standards, or even North American content standards. The best I've ever seen is 55% for a $53K half ton truck. It takes 67% to claim this, and most of their truck are right at the 50% mark. Even Toyota's been calling Ford out in their adds about who has more content.

At onetime Ford made everything in their products with the exception being tires. That was kinda like the industry standard for fifty years. But it also ate their lunch. They divested items one right after another. Till they were making money instead of wasting it. (somethings are never going to be profitable to manufacture as part of your core business). Probably the single biggest items were glass and raw steel and iron. Later they sold off Autolite (may have retained the name only). Now they have their forge shops in China and Vietnam. Their steering units will all soon be Chinese as well as their electronic throttle systems (many are already). Their frames are made by Dana like everybody else. Same for the rear ends. This went on till in 1985 Ford was doing about 37% of their installed parts, and the 37% number has never stopped slipping downwards. In 1985 G.M. did about 73% of the parts in house, and they've slipped down to about 60% (some models are closer to 50% and some are much higher).

I take no joy in outting Ford on their content (Chrysler too), and G.M. kinda gives me hives these days. But it's simply a matter of fact that they can't avoid
gary

 

[Tikkamike]

Have a toyota.. what more could a guy want?

 

[blipelt]

Just upgraded from my 2010 Tundra grade to a 2011 Rock Warrior. Couldn't pass up the deal they offered me. Went in for oil change came out with a new pickup. Mine never hit the lot, they had it sold before my deal was finished.


Brent

 

[Tikkamike]

What's a rock warrior?

 

[blipelt]

Above the TRD package. Better shocks, tires, and skid plates. They have tires in between a 31 and 33" from the factory and rims. Mine came with the leveling kit and a heavy duty package(added a leaf and a stabilizer bar in back). The dealership put together a heavy duty package. The mines around here are starting to buy some and try them out. Our mine has had all makes to figure out which one will break down the least. We were strictly Chevy up until 2009, we have had so many problems with them(chevy).


Brent

 

[Tikkamike]

Yeah that's funny. My dad used to run the oilfield here and they used to run Ford and Dodge. Then started buying Chevy's and had to give their mechanic a different job. That was the late 90's now I see that company is using Toyota and Chevy. I think if Toyota gets on the ball with some 1 tons or at least hd3/4 tons they will sell a ton of fleet vehicles to the oilfields/mines where the true test of a truck is.

 

[Trickymissfit]

Have a toyota.. what more could a guy want?

a job
gary

 

[Tikkamike]

a job
gary

Yeah I guess That would take priority. No work over there?

 

[Trickymissfit]

Yeah that's funny. My dad used to run the oilfield here and they used to run Ford and Dodge. Then started buying Chevy's and had to give their mechanic a different job. That was the late 90's now I see that company is using Toyota and Chevy. I think if Toyota gets on the ball with some 1 tons or at least hd3/4 tons they will sell a ton of fleet vehicles to the oilfields/mines where the true test of a truck is.

problem here is that most folks that use a 3/4 ton or a one ton truck want a deisel with an automatic transmission. That's a different ball game that a gas engine half ton. Ford can't keep automatic transmissions behind their deisels. Dodge is going to switch over to the Asian or the ZF light duty automatic (the Asian is nothing but an Allison AT542 with a park brake). G.M. of course uses the Allison LCT 1000 transmission. Toyota has inquired with Cummins (like Ford) about using their six cylinder engine. Can't be done as Chrysler owns the engine lock stock and barrel (including the copyrights), but the two could buy the engine from Chrysler. Ain't happening in this lifetime. But on the otherhand Nissan is working on a new heavyduty design that will be built by Dodge. There's a chance it might see a Cummins engine (kinda slim but a chance). CAT has been in off and on talks with one of the big three for two years or more, and power packs have been on the dynos. Problem is they are not producing great fuel milage, but have more power than any sane person can use. This time next year there will be a new ten speed gear box on the market that will not violate a certain piece of contractual language, and this may open some doors with the asian markets in the one ton and up catagories. The world of heavy duty trucks is a wild market to be in, and sometime around 2020 that market is set to explode like a hydrogen bomb! It would right now but for paragraph in a contract has it shuttered. The stuff for the 2017 and later time frame is already on the dynos, and we're gonna like what we see
gary

 

[Tikkamike]

problem here is that most folks that use a 3/4 ton or a one ton truck want a deisel with an automatic transmission. That's a different ball game that a gas engine half ton. Ford can't keep automatic transmissions behind their deisels. Dodge is going to switch over to the Asian or the ZF light duty automatic (the Asian is nothing but an Allison AT542 with a park brake). G.M. of course uses the Allison LCT 1000 transmission. Toyota has inquired with Cummins (like Ford) about using their six cylinder engine. Can't be done as Chrysler owns the engine lock stock and barrel (including the copyrights), but the two could buy the engine from Chrysler. Ain't happening in this lifetime. But on the otherhand Nissan is working on a new heavyduty design that will be built by Dodge. There's a chance it might see a Cummins engine (kinda slim but a chance). CAT has been in off and on talks with one of the big three for two years or more, and power packs have been on the dynos. Problem is they are not producing great fuel milage, but have more power than any sane person can use. This time next year there will be a new ten speed gear box on the market that will not violate a certain piece of contractual language, and this may open some doors with the asian markets in the one ton and up catagories. The world of heavy duty trucks is a wild market to be in, and sometime around 2020 that market is set to explode like a hydrogen bomb! It would right now but for paragraph in a contract has it shuttered. The stuff for the 2017 and later time frame is already on the dynos, and we're gonna like what we see
gary

I wish I knew as much about guns as you do trucks! That's interesting.

 

[westcliffe01]

So I have been down this road too and am frustrated by the fuel economy of trucks we are allowed to buy in the US.

My first truck was a 1986 Toyota motorhome. 6200lb and over 10ft high with a 4 cylinder 22re. You guessed it, performance was not an adjective one could use in the presence of that beast. Having said that, one needs to consider that people drive those things 140k+ miles without working on the engine in most cases. I did a memorable trip west along I80 with a westerly wind that was running 30-40mph. I probably drove 1300 miles, mostly in second gear (it had a 3 speed automatic with an electronic overdrive, but I have no idea why it was even on there, since it could only possibly be used when going downhill). Arriving in the rockys, it felt like it had a lawnmower engine, since the altitude dropped the power another 30%.

My second truck was a dodge ram 1500 2004 model with the 3.7 V6. The bottom of the doors and tailgate are already rusted through and it is not a truck I drive every day. In fact, in winter I try to drive anything else, since it is a death trap. No ABS, no LSD and if you touch the throttle in slick conditions the front and rear wants to swap ends with no effort at all. That is while running Bridgestone blizaks. Without the snow tires, it can not even get out of my driveway which has about 8" of rise in 20ft. Fuel economy is about 16mpg average city cycle. On the highway it will go up to 20 if I keep the speed down. Towing a bumper pull trailer 22 ft long, it got 10mpg and could barely do 60mph. The truck itself has never given me a moments trouble except for the rust and gutless performance and crap fuel economy.

My third truck is in restoration (will now be cut short since my son in law needs transport) and is a Toyota Pickup 1992 model with the 22re and 5 speed manual (2wd) which I bought as a wreck for $1200. Despite being 12 years older than my Dodge it has less rust, except for the tailgate. It just sat all winter abandoned in a snow bank and last weekend I went to charge the battery and get it running so that work could start on it and it started right up on the first crank. Thats the legendary Toyota reliability for you. Some of the new stuff thought up in Ann Arbor seems to be less successful, although it was proven that the runaway cars was just a hoax. This truck was intended to be my cheap transportation and I was going to deal with the usual midwest issues before they nickled and dimed me (rusted out brake lined, perished flexible hoses, start of chassis rust, getting paint back onto the chassis, treating any rust spots on the body). I will put in new carpet and I got a pair of leather seats from an Audi to have a more comfortable perch. These are small trucks. If I could, I would have gotten an extended cab, so there is at least space to put a briefcase or a rifle when going to the range. Now those things will have to go in the bed.

I did get an explorer rear axle with a higher ratio and LSD to provide something more than 1wd in winter conditions. It is amazing to think that a big heavy vehicle like an explorer would have a bolt pattern that matches a much older truck with less than half the GVW. The light weight and relatively low COG should make this truck a lot safer than my Dodge. Fuel consumption should be up in the low 30's due to small engine, light weight and reduced frontal area.

The most recent truck I bought is my 2008 Ford F250 superduty with the powerstroke engine. I looked forever for a 2006MY without the emissions equipment, but people expected ridiculous prices for trucks that had 120k+ mileage. The one I bought was a one owner truck which had spent its life on a ranch in Texas half way between Houston and Austin. It had 56k miles and the asking price was about $26k. It is an extended cab with 4wd and the 6ft bed. I personally don't like the double cabs since it is usually only 2 of us in it and the overall length gets to be pretty significant and the margin for payload goes down relative to a single or extended cab. Not to mention that the price goes up several thousand too...

I own a Bobcat loader backhoe that weighs 7600lb and I need to be able to trailer it and typically 10k is the limit before things start getting sticky with CDL, DOT etc etc. So having vehicle to tow 10k was the key thing and it is not a commuter vehicle for me. Having 4wd and particularly low range is certainly an asset in winter and on rough trails, provided they don't get too narrow. It is certainly no Jeep substitute. Too big, too heavy and it takes a LOT of space to turn around. What is interesting is that its city cycle fuel consumption is no worse than the Dodge, notwithstanding having double the curb weight and all the emissions crap choking the life out of it.

So, based on that, the dodge will eventually go. I will have to figure out what to do to get the emissions equipment on the Ford to work properly, at the very least, the exhaust will get wrapped from the turbo all the way back to the DPF, since the heat loss in winter is so great that it can take an entire week to regenerate the DPF. That is unless I take a detour that pushes my commute up to over an hour, since that seems to be the minimum time it needs when the temperature is 30F or lower. The amount of smoke produced when the regeneration starts is simply ridiculous, I am surprised that no state trooper has pulled me over yet, but it is bad for about 5 minutes until the carbon really gets ignited. I was pretty close to the development of this emissions system and as usual, Ford had to save every buck they possibly could in building the system, yet I have my mileage on every second tank drop to 9mpg for the life of the truck, so what does this cost me as the consumer as opposed to paying perhaps $50 more for insulated downpipes and cones on the oxidation catalyst and DPF ? Penny wise pound foolish and the owners hate the product.

 

[westcliffe01]

Snip deisel deisel
gary

Gary, I hate to see the same mistake repeated a million time, so I just want you to know that it is DIESEL and not deisel. The word comes from the inventor of the compression engine, Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (yes, it was his name) You can read about it here: Rudolf Diesel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The gasoline engine was invented by Nikolaus August Otto (Nikolaus Otto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and if you work in the automotive industry in Germany you will still hear both engines called by those names (Otto engine = gasoline engine). I worked in Germany for 3 years of which half was spent working on the Ford Focus, which was engineered by Ford in the Dunton Engineering Center in London, and the other 18 months working on everyone else's system (Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Audi, VW).

I arrived right after Peugeot launched the soot filter and just before everyone else started doing the same thing. Out of everyone I worked with, Mercedes seemed to be the most knowledgeable and open. Porsche was always cutting edge and pushing the boundaries of physics. BMW very organized and in some cases designing their cars around some key components instead of the other way around. The 3 series, I remember them punching the suspension mounting holes after the body was completely assembled, since they had concluded that the accuracy of body assembly could not be good enough (they had 0.020" tolerances on assembled panels, which was one of the smallest tolerances I had encountered. They built their tooling with meticulous planning and every clamp on a tool had its own valve so that engineers could easily check the fit of each and every clamp on the entire assembly line.

If you have ever gone to any of the SAE dinners, I found them to be sickening compared to going to meetings with the European car makers. The one meeting I went to was a meeting after the launch of the new F150. I listened to speaker after speaker talk about how the F150 was bigger, heavier and more powerful and how no man (who was a man, as opposed to a girly man) would be able to resist owning one. Yes, this is progress. Lets make it bigger heavier and more powerful and still call it an F150, where a few years ago you would have been lucky to get that in an F350. And what is being introduced that is lighter, smaller and more efficient for those of us who want to conserve our cash and don't need to wear a penis extender ? Yep, you got it ----- NOTHING. Europe, Australia, Africa there are tons of trucks from 1.7l to 3.0L turbo diesel which can get close to 50mpg and maybe down to the mid 20's on the bigger ones while shifting a load. Its been 8 years since I moved here and VW is the only car maker with a diesel and it runs $25k min, compared to $<12k for the last diesel vehicle I owned that got nearly 60mpg.

In the meantime, more and more people buy Japanese and Korean (make it and they will come) and the US car makers wonder why life is so tough.