I hear that Sterling is going to stop production
I have heard the same thing, I wondered if that also included the Sterling pick up truck. I talked to Sterling in Las Vegas at the Con-Met Expo in March and the sales guy said they were under contract through 2012 to build the pick ups and would offer parts until 2016 if they did not renew the contract with Dodge to keep the trucks. With the economy like it is I guess they could back out at anytime.
I heard the same today talking to a collegue. Does it have to do with Fords non-compete with Daimler coming to and end, pertaining to the heavy truck market?
Old news. And it doesn't have anything to do with Ford. It is because of poor sales. Saw this on the Portland news a month ago. http://jalopnik.com/5063260/daimler-ag-to-axe-sterling-trucks-in-north-america-cut-3500-jobs
Was just published in Today's Trucking this month: Freightliner is dropping Sterling due to the slowing truck sales market and said Sterling never gained the market share they were expecting. They said they will fill the gap with FL and Western Star models. They are also closing the Portland plant and moving Western Star production to Mexico. Right on. I thought they ruined Star enough when they moved it out of Canada, and went from good hand built trucks to production line junk like everything else these days. The magazine article also speculates you may see Sterling return under a different name in Mexico. No mention of the Bullet line. Ford should have stayed in the truck business (just my opinion). Everyone thank Freightliner for sending all your jobs to mexico. The article says workers down there are paid $2.00/hour versus $30.00/hour in Portland.
Sterling will cease production in March.
As a non-fan of anything Ford. Good riddance! I was mighty surprised when Ford was able to pull the wool over the eyes of Freightliner and sold the division to them. I didn't figure it would last long. However, as seems to be the case just about everywhere in the automotive field, it's more good paying American and Canadian jobs disappearing fast. If we lose much more, I'm afraid of the result for both counties. This is a time of seismic shift for North America.
Portland @$30.00 per hour sounds pretty competitive compared to GM at $73.00- per hour. No doubt you have to add the fringe benefit and legacy cost to the $30.00 though.
GM's average UAW wage is $28/hour. Average benefit load on top of that is $10/hour. The $73/hour figure that is cited by politicians such as Senator Jon Kyl is a number derived by taking the total wage and benefit load paid by GM to all current and retired employees, and dividing by the total hours worked -- so it includes the retiree burden. Foreign automakers employing in the U.S. haven't been here long enough to have a significant number of retirees, so they have no retiree burden yet. And in their own countries, health care is nationalized so they don't have to pay it directly either. In other words, the foreign automakers are being intelligent by gaming our health-care and pension system, and externalizing their U.S. employee retiree health-care and pension costs onto the U.S. taxpayer in the future, and onto their own countries for their own employees. When you add in the costs of health care and pensions into the Japanese or European automakers' average hourly cost, there is no meaningful difference with what the U.S. automakers are paying. RWM
If your numbers are right, and the fringe numbers seems pretty low, you still have not allowed for the UAW work rules that cut deep into employee productivity and the reported need for 20% additional people required to cover employee absentism. If they want to become competitive, start paying a base hourly rate and an incentive package based upon quality, productivity and attendance. That is what the smart companies do and their man hours, labor costs and profits show it. Fact is, GM, Ford and Chrysler got to quit the past practice of giving away the store. Caterpillar did it in 1992 and has been reaping the benefits of it ever since. Nucor Steel has done it since day one in 1965 and has been profiting from it ever since.
Greg, even most union assembly plants now work on a team basis and the team is cross-trained. But, since the assembly line never stops, the plants have to have fill-in workers. The non-union plants work the same way. Can't shut down the assembly line because a worker needs to go take a crap you understand, even if it is a non-union Texas Brown Trout. Railwayman has the numbers about a good as anyone and the reasons for them. I might ad that under the two-tier wage and benefit system incorporated into the last few UAW contracts, there is no set corporate pension for the lower tier workers. All they get is a 401k plan, which can be a two way street for earnings as we are all seeing right now. Which of these, as a worker, would be the pension plan you would like to have? I know what I would like, and it isn't what I got after about 1980. I think what we are seeing is the third world nations catching up to America and the Western nations in terms of wages and benefits. But what will happen is that as soon as manufacturers realize that they can move manufacturing on to fourth world countries for cheaper labor, the third world bunch will lose out and it starts all over again. On the same side of the coin is that American and other western industrialized nations wage and benefit packages are shrinking down to third world levels. Not good for the home team. I like cheap prices and decent quality like anyone else, but I also realize that I have to have a decent job to buy anything and that I depend on my neighbors to buy the stuff I produce so that I can have my job. Unfortunately, some dude in Japan or China just isn't going to do that in a fashion that keeps me or folks I know employed making good money and benefits. Sorry, got off topic here.
Paystar, I agree. I would not trade my old '94STAR for an '04 if I had to keep and operate the 04. The new ones aren't made near as stout as them old beast are.