For the most part, those that buy any truck from Ford are aware of what they are getting. One of the best pickups from a company that has been making them for the last 30 years. The F-series pickup has been one of the best selling pickup trucks of all time and has accounted for more than 90 percent of Ford’s earnings all over the world in recent years. Those numbers are hard to miss. Ford made some changes last year that might have hurt sales, but seem to have rebounded this year.
Ford took some of its plants and made some tooling changes and that could have been a part of why the sales declined for the first time in many years. The profit was less and as far as investors go, it was hard to swallow. If you are an investor, you are happy to realize that the sales did return last month and the start of 2015 could be promising for the rest of the year.
The demand for the 2015 Ford F150 has grown so much that the company has added to the Kansas City plant in order to keep up with the sales this year. Sales have jumped this year with the company selling more than 54,000 2015 Ford F150 pickups in January alone. Apparently some dealerships are still trying to get rid of 2014 models and that could be slowing the sales of the new model. According to one source, the 2015 Ford F150 models only accounted for 18 percent of sales.
One of the things that changed with this year’s model is the fact that Ford is trying to reduce the weight of the truck in order to accommodate better fuel economy. The 2015 Ford F150 reportedly comes with an aluminum body and that is supposed to reduce the weight enough to increase miles per gallon, which makes sense. On the other side of the coin, however, could be the cost to repair an all aluminum body.
That cost is being recognized by dealerships all over the country right now. There is a video posted online that shows what a sledgehammer can do to the side of the truck and the costs that are associated with it afterwards. In the video, the rear quarter-panel was damaged and the findings were that the aluminum panel cost much more to repair compared to the steel body from previous models. The test model was not brought to a Ford certified body shop however and that might have added to the cost of the repair.