I live near a big Ford truck dealership and a couple of days ago I stopped by to see what they had i walked into the show room and i walked around the lots and Then i got into my rental car and as i started to leave some guy said that he needed my parking spot.I said what for the place was already over stocked with trucks. He was the general manager. I told him that I had just walked through his dealership and I was there 20 minutes and not one Salesperson came near me to see if they could help be out. I told him That I wanted to buy a truck that day. He did nothing to try to get me to come back inside. They are over stocked with 06's and the prices are way out of range. with nothing to offer. In my day ,It was called supply and demand. Not over stocked and you take what we have.

 

I grew up in a town called Linden, NJ and just within the last 2 years we lost our GM plant and 30 miles away the Ford plant closed. I read 2day in USA Today that they might offer hourly-paid workers between $100,000 and $140,000 to quit. Would you take that after so many years of service?

 

Hey let's all slow down and think about what you are saying here . I work for Boeing they pay their CEO's millions in bonuses just befo Allan Mually left our stock was artificially inflated and he got over 14 million in bonus . Now he jumped ship and Ford payed him millions in stock . Now lets all think here if the unions were gone do you really think the price of cars and trucks would go down I say no way the only thing that would happen is CEO's paydays would get bigger . and to all you union hatters I bet you have never read Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle." This book launched a government investigation into meatpacking plants in Chicago because of the horrific abuses that factory owners perpetrated upon workers. Abuses that wouldn't have been possible with a strong Union. Unions aren't perfect but they are concerned about protecting the interests of the comman man. Fat cat CEO's should shoulder a large share of the blame when it comes to why prices of products are so high. I would rather see 1000 common workers get $1 more an hour than see one CEO get a huge bonus even when their company is underperforming.

 

Well said .......well said..........Too many fat cats bro'

 

This is usually what happens when the following things happen:
1-A company makes inferior products, insulting the intelligence of the customer.
2-The dealerships which repair, does maintenance on these products try and take customers for idiots.
3-Company's neglect customers concerns over problems with vehicles.

I think this should be a lesson to other domestic manufacturers, take customer concerns serious. MAKE QUALITY PRODUCTS.
IF IT'S INFERIOR, THEN DON'T LET IT LEAVE THE FACTORY FLOOR.
JUST MY TWO CENTS

 

Well put.

I'm pretty sure I read "The Jungle" in high school, but it was a long time ago... The Jungle took place in the 1930's, or even earlier, if I remember - something about sausage packing plants in Chicago wasn't it? Unions then made huge gains for workers in terms of safety as well as pay.

CEO pay is disgusting. I can't think of a better word - it turns my stomach. They KNOW that either workers are getting laid off, or their products suck, or both, but their goal is to show that this quarter's earnings are better than last. The scandals from the last 5 years, most notably Enron, have exposed this, but I don't expect more the few other token cases to be brought against CEOs. I mean, outright fraud is illegal but this quarter-by-quarter outlook legally hurts workers, smaller stockholders (owners in the company with no voice) who get a periodic big surprise when they find out their savings are invested in a worthless company, and their customers who get a product in which nobody felt pride producing.

In this thread, we've got some people pointing to the top (CEO's), some the bottom (unions), and probably some pointing at both (like me). An Indian guy I work with was talking about this very news article yesterday. He had a pretty good point of view, I thought. He says the blame belongs throughout the company but it's human nature to look out for their own interests. He says, everybody screws everybody else. They have a job to do, so both CEO's and auto workers are needed, but their main goal is to look after their personal interests.

So if you buy that argument, I can say that now we're seeing what happens when that battle of personal interests is taken to such a large scale. Everybody loses.

 

When I worked for one of our largest Airlines The CEO made over 9 Millon a year and wanted more after 9-11-01 he gotten a pay raise for laying us off and putting workers and there famlies on the street I know it all about the money and how CEO"s can cut job so they can make there bank accounts bigger.

There are some good Unions out there but there a lot more bad one all they care about it taking you'r due money every pay check.

 

You're right, so we have to be careful not to generalize.

Here's another thought. VW has the TDI, and Japanese automakers have hybrids. Trucks have made up the majority of sales for US automakers for a long time, but the writing has been on the wall for a while about more fuel efficient passenger cars. GM and Dodge have FlexFuel. I think my '97 Stratus manual said I could run e85 ethanol, 10 years ago. Ford HAD their gas/electric hybrid Escape (compact SUV) but they abandonned it. Why would they abandon a viable technology? If they had something wrong with it, they should have tweaked and tuned it. How far off could they have been with the way they did it? US automakers are not addressing higher efficiency cars, and things are getting more strict for trucks. Diesels in particular for 2007 will have huge emissions changes. And if the EPA holds them to a gas-powered fleet average MPG of X, and they only sell trucks, they're going to have to come up with more efficient trucks because trucks right now are below that X.

This is an example of the danger of the quarter-by-quarter mentality. No or very limited R&D leads to a company that doesn't come up with products people want or need. UPS is testing a hydraulic/diesel hybrid - instead of storing energy in batteries, it's stored as hydraulic pressure. I'm no mechanical engineer but it sounds like there might be some potential there. If you've ever seen a backhoe or even a log splitter at work, you know how much power you can get from hydraulic pressure. Why wouldn't these huge billion dollar corporations spend a few bucks on this?

Just some thoughts to consider or argue...

 

hoopdad, I don't know what you do for a living, but I don't think you get paid enough. I just learned more in this thread than I have since I was in school!

 

Just recently, there was an article in the USA Today paper about a dignitary being given a Mercury mountaneer as a gift.
This vehicle is equipped with everything, including a compact refrigerator. There were other amenities but i can't remember all of them at the moment.
Now, with all of the amenities this vehicle is equipped with, and it's still able to get 33MPG, tells me that the technology is there. It's just that the powers that be (The individuals who gain from the oil Profits-we know who they are, their the ones who made record profits when gas prices reached in excess of $3.00 a gallon)
don't want that to happen because, that would decrease their profits. You see, their intent is to erase the middle class, and only have two classes of people--Rich and the Poor. So they can distinguish themselves from everyone else...