2015 Ford F150 Popularity Could Cause Supply Shortages

Ford Motor Company is expecting the 2015 F150 ever and if the demand increases enough from what we saw last year when Ford sold over 763k trucks, the automaker might run into a problem meeting the demand for F150 pickups with their current production plan.

While there are skeptics who believe that Ford’s move to an aluminum body will be a bad choice, the automaker expects the new 2015 F150 to be very, very popular. Ford has seen a record level of early interested in the new half ton pickup, and that could lead to record sales for the next generation F150. However, with the new F150 being built at the Dearborn plant that was already running at full capacity for the previous generation truck and overflow production help coming from the Kansas City plant, the company can build around 700,000 F150s a year, but will that be enough for the 2015 F150? Today I crunch some numbers to see if the F150 demand could exceed Ford’s current supply capabilities.

2015 Ford F150 Galleries:
A closer look at the trimlines of the 2015 Ford F150
The 2015 Ford F150 at the 2014 NAIAS

Possible 2015 F150 Sales Figures
Ford doesn’t split up F150 sales from the other F Series pickups so we don’t know exactly how many F150 pickups Ford has sold over the past few years. However, I did some hunting around online and found that for the 2012 calendar year, Ford sold 119,338 Super Duty (F250, F350, F450) pickups so compared to the 645,316 F Series trucks sold that year, 18.5% were Super Duty models and 525,978 were F150 pickups. If we use that same 81.5% take rate for the F150 in 2014 when Ford sold a total of 763,402 F Series pickups, then the Motor Company sold somewhere around 622,173 F150s. Mind you, that number is estimated based on 2012 take rate numbers, but it should be in the general ballpark.

If should also be noted that Ford F Series sales improved by 18.3% from 2013 to 2014 and while the Super Duty will likely see similar sales in 2015 to what Ford saw in 2014, Ford expects F150 sales to improve. Say that the 2015 F150 proves to be 20% more popular than 2014 trucks that sold roughly 622,173 units, Ford could be looking at F150 sales in the area of 746,600 units. That 20% figure is only 2% better than the growth shown from 2013 to 2014 and actual growth numbers could be much higher, but it seems that the new and improved F150 could easily surpass the 700,000 annual sales mark.

Huge Sales Could Cause Production Shortages
Ford Motor Company has stated that at full capacity, the Dearborn Truck Plant and the Kansas City Assembly Plant can build “over 700,000” trucks per year. If the 2015 F150 proves to be popular enough to hit those estimated numbers discussed above, Ford will have to find a way to increase production of their truck plants or risk running short on trucks at dealerships around the US.

With production of the 2015 Ford F150 beginning yesterday and deliveries expected to begin next month, we should quickly find out if this new F150 will be popular enough to stress Ford’s production capacity of the aluminum half ton pickup.