Ford F-150 Sales to Drop This Quarter Over Supplier Issue -- WSJ

By Ryan Felton

Ford Motor's profitable F-150 took a hit this quarter because of a supplier issue that took production offline in recent weeks at a key truck assembly plant, the automaker's chief executive said Wednesday.

Ford's latest supplier issue temporarily halted production at a Michigan plant that makes the F-150 for about one week.

"It is impacting our third quarter wholesale, but I'm very optimistic," Ford CEO Jim Farley told reporters Wednesday on the sidelines of a company event in Detroit. The automaker sent a supply-chain team to quickly solve the problem, and fourth-quarter production shouldn't be affected, Farley said. "We're on track," Farley said.

A Ford spokesman said the latest issue involved a shortage of components.

The drop off marks the latest challenge for Ford to recover sales of the F-150 over the past year following a series of fires at a key aluminum supplier that had rocked the company's truck production for over a year. Ford's overall U.S. sales through August were down 10%. Sales of Ford's F-Series trucks, which include the F-150 and heavy-duty pickups, are down 11%.

Ford took about $800 million in costs related to the issue with the supplier, Novelis, through the first half of 2025, Ford told analysts in July. The aluminum plant restarted production in June.

Ford has said it expects to build an additional 150,000 trucks this year over 2025's reduced volume to make up for sales lost from the aluminum plant shortage. Ford needs to have F-Series production output of at least 95,000 a month through the end of the year to hit that target, Barclays analysts said in a note Wednesday.

Ford's steep drop-off in sales in 2026 is expected to result in Korean automaker Hyundai Motor unseating it as the number three car company in the U.S. by sales, according to estimates from industry research firm Cox Automotive.

The F-Series production challenges and Ford's decision to discontinue the mass-market Escape SUV at the end of last year contributed to the company's decline, said Charlie Chesbrough, Cox's senior economist.

"Among manufacturers having a difficult quarter, Ford may be our leader," Chesbrough said.

Write to Ryan Felton at ryan.felton@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 30, 2026 11:32 ET (15:32 GMT)