Ford Motor will shut down its Kansas City, Missouri pickup truck and van plant for a week in early January to match production and demand, the company stated on Tuesday.
The plant constructs F-150 pickup and Ford Transit vans. Ford also shut down the Kansas City plant for a week a few months earlier.
The move comes a day after General Motors revealed it was closing 5 U.S. plants, generally ones that construct light-selling sedans, in January from one to three weeks.
Later on Monday, General Motors likewise stated that in March it will lay off about 1,300 plant employees and cut the second shift at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant. The plant develops the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, and three sedans: the Chevrolet Impala, Cadillac CT6 and Buick LaCrosse.
Sedans remain important for a lot of automobile producers, but U.S. consumer hunger for them has subsided in the past couple of years in favor of SUVs and pickup trucks.
The one week shutdown of the Ford Kansas City plant will enable “time to perform maintenance” of the equipment at the factory, Ford stated in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
Information from the Automotive News, which reported the Kansas City shutdown earlier on Tuesday, reveals there were 108 days of Transit stock at the start of this month, up from 82 days a month previously. The Kansas City plant is the sole U.S. plant that makes the Transit van.
The Volt has been well-received among electrified automobiles, with sales up almost 60 percent this year through November. Although it is still a low-volume specific niche product at about 2,500 in U.S. sales in November.
