Ford Adding 1,500 Jobs to Support F-150 Production

Ford is adding new jobs to support its aluminum-body F-150 truck, which is 700 pounds lighter than earlier models. (Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Co.)

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Ford Motor Co. will add 1,550 jobs – 650 in Michigan – and bump pay for 300 to 500 workers at plants outside Michigan to meet demand for the 2015 F-150 pickup, the automaker said Wednesday.

Almost one-third – 500 – of the new jobs will be at the Dearborn Stamping and Dearborn Diversified plants, 150 will go to Sterling Axle, and 900 will jobs will be added at Ford’s Kansas City, MO, assembly plant, The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are reporting.

All of those locations support production of the 2015 F-150, which has been flying off dealer lots. Some customers have been waiting months to receive their new trucks, Ford said.

““It is important to get as many of the new vehicles on the road as possible,” said Michael Robinet, managing director of IHS Automotive Consulting. “Ford needs to pull out all the stops. The vehicles at the beginning of the cycle are the most profitable. They have customers waiting for them and are highly contented.”

The F-150, which features an all-aluminum body designed to increase fuel efficiency, is loaded with new features that make for a complicated build, including a 360-degree camera to better park and navigate tight spaces, integrated loading ramps and cargo management system, and a remote tailgate.

The Dearborn Truck Plant recently added a third shift to make the aluminum-bodied F-150, and the Kansas City Assembly Plant installed the new equipment needed to build it.

“The fact that we’re focusing on is that we’re hiring more people, and the reason we’re hiring more people is to support sales of the truck,” said Bill Dirksen, Ford’s vice president of labor affairs. “That’s a good thing for our business.”

The new trucks are spending an average of 12 days on dealer lots before being sold, and some top-line trucks, like the F-150 Platinum and King Ranch versions, are going even faster. Normally, a new vehicle is on a dealer lot for about 70 days before being sold.

Last month was the strongest January for F-Series sales since 2004, and were up 17 percent from the year prior.

The bulk of the 54,370 F-Series sales were the F-150, and 18 percent of them were the new 2015 model, said Erich Merkle, Ford’s U.S. sales analyst.

“As a result of how well we’re doing, we need to make more trucks,” said Bill Dirksen, Ford vice president of labor affairs.

The pay bumps come at plants outside of Michigan that have exceeded the number of second-tier hourly wage earners allowed under its union contract with the United Auto Workers. The majority of those workers are at assembly plants in Chicago, Louisville and Kansas City, MO.

The new workers have already been identified and will be on the job by the end of March, the automaker said.

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