March 7, 2014 - 7:34 am ET
DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co., which plans to cease making the Econoline van later this year, plans to revive the Ohio factory where the vehicle is made by investing $168 million to move pickup production there from Mexico early in 2015.
Production of Ford’s commercial F-650 and F-750 medium-duty pickups will move from a plant in Escobedo, Mexico, to Avon Lake, Ohio, the company said in a statement today. Ford had operated a Mexican-based joint-venture with Navistar International Corp. known as the Blue Diamond Trucking Co. The automaker is cutting those ties to take full control of production, design and engineering of its top-selling F-series pickups, Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, said in an interview.
Ford derives most of its profit from its F-series truck line, Morgan Stanley has said. The second-biggest U.S. automaker sold 763,402 such vehicles last year, including 8,682 medium- and heavy-duty pickups, up 18 percent from 2012. Later this year, the company will debut an aluminum-bodied F-150 pickup.
“This is a highly profitable vehicle,”said Kristin Dziczek, an analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “The bigger the vehicle, the higher the profit, so that makes it less difficult that the labor costs are slightly higher in Ohio than Mexico.”
Ford also won’t have to share profits with Navistar now that it’s pulled out of that joint-venture, Dziczek said.
“We’re doing this to bring the 650-750 production in-house so that we have complete design, manufacturing and engineering control over our F-series lineup,” Hinrichs said.
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DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co., which plans to cease making the Econoline van later this year, plans to revive the Ohio factory where the vehicle is made by investing $168 million to move pickup production there from Mexico early in 2015.
Production of Ford’s commercial F-650 and F-750 medium-duty pickups will move from a plant in Escobedo, Mexico, to Avon Lake, Ohio, the company said in a statement today. Ford had operated a Mexican-based joint-venture with Navistar International Corp. known as the Blue Diamond Trucking Co. The automaker is cutting those ties to take full control of production, design and engineering of its top-selling F-series pickups, Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, said in an interview.
Ford derives most of its profit from its F-series truck line, Morgan Stanley has said. The second-biggest U.S. automaker sold 763,402 such vehicles last year, including 8,682 medium- and heavy-duty pickups, up 18 percent from 2012. Later this year, the company will debut an aluminum-bodied F-150 pickup.
“This is a highly profitable vehicle,”said Kristin Dziczek, an analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “The bigger the vehicle, the higher the profit, so that makes it less difficult that the labor costs are slightly higher in Ohio than Mexico.”
Ford also won’t have to share profits with Navistar now that it’s pulled out of that joint-venture, Dziczek said.
“We’re doing this to bring the 650-750 production in-house so that we have complete design, manufacturing and engineering control over our F-series lineup,” Hinrichs said.
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