UPDATED: 5/9/18 9:53 am ET - adds details
DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. said production of F-150 and Super Duty pickups at multiple U.S. factories will be halted this week because of a fire at a supplier plant that produces instrument panels for the trucks.
Production of Ford's most profitable vehicle could be knocked out for several weeks in the wake of last week's fire that interrupted production at the Meridian Lightweight Technologies plant near Lansing, Mich., a person familiar with the situation told Bloomberg.
Output of F-150 pickups at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Mich., could be idled Wednesday or Thursday, people familiar with the situation told Reuters. A Ford spokeswoman said on Wednesday the automaker is working very closely with the supplier to get production re-started.
Ford on Monday said it idled F-150 production until May 14.
Meanwhile, Super Duty production has been halted at Kentucky Truck and Ohio Assembly, although both of those plants continue to produce other vehicles and no workers have been laid off, Ford confirmed Wednesday.
The shutdowns could cost Ford as much as 15,000 trucks per week, according to James Albertine, an analyst with Consumer Edge Research.
F-Series pickups generate most of Ford’s profits and Morgan Stanley recently estimated the value of the franchise as greater than that of the entire company. The truck line, including F-250 and other larger models, hauls in about $40 billion in annual revenue, exceeding the annual sales of companies such as Facebook Inc. and Nike Inc.
“This is an extremely fluid situation,” Kelli Felker, a Ford spokeswoman, said in an interview. “We are working hard to get replacement parts.”
The F-150 is so important to Ford that Albertine wrote that he is considering adjusting his earnings projections for the automaker once the full-impact of the supplier fire is known.
“We do expect Ford will incur higher production costs during this shutdown period and potentially in the period immediately following the shutdown to the degree Ford elects to accelerate production to make up for this shortfall,” Albertine wrote in a note to investors.
Plentiful supplies
While the F-150 is Ford’s most important vehicle in terms of sales, the automaker has enough stock to be able to weather the downtime.
At the end of April, Ford had an 84-days supply of F-series pickups, according to AutoData. Even with heavy demand, the production stoppage would likely have to last for multiple weeks to dent those numbers.
F-series sales in the U.S. rose 4.1 percent to 287,295 through April, according to the Automotive News Data Center.
Other impacts
The supplier's fire is affecting other automakers.
Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Inc., in a statement released from its plant in Vance, Ala., said: "The damage caused at Meridian has caused a shortage of components used in our cockpits for some of our vehicles built at MBUSI. As a result, we have cancelled production shifts in certain areas and adjusted production hours for our team members this week. We continue to assess the situation and are working with Meridian to restore normal production levels."
BMW, in a statement to Automotive News on Monday, said production of its X5 crossover will be affected Monday afternoon and evening. It said its plant South Carolina has an inventory of parts on hand.
General Motors said there was no immediate impact to its operations, although its global supply chain team continues to monitor the situation.
Getting back online
The cause of the fire has not been determined.
Meridian Plant Manager George Asher on Friday said in a statement emailed to Automotive News: "The immediate goal for the team at Meridian is to perform our evaluation of damage so that we can assess when we can return to normal operations."
Meridian said it is working with its customers to move dies to its plants in Strathroy, Ontario, and the United Kingdom, Asher wrote, though the letter did not disclose the names of the customers.
Bloomberg, Reuters, Michael Martinez and Automotive News staff contributed to this report.