In announcing it would add 2,000 jobs to its Claycomo Assembly Plant, Ford Motor cited increased sales tied to new stability in the home building market. At the truck factory, Ford executives drew parallels that are being seen industry-wide.
Watch someone in the building trades pull up at a job site, it’s a good bet you’ll see them driving a pickup. With building jobs on the rise, its apparent construction workers believe it’s time to buy another truck.
Detroit based truck makers all agree, sales are up.
The Ford Claycomo plant makes the F series pickup which company figures sold at an April rate 24 percent higher than in April 2012. The trend brings Ford to add 900 jobs to the Northland truck assembly line.
This is a direct parallel between housing starts and the vehicles favored by people who build houses.
Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City cited a 30 percent boost in residential building permits, metro wide, in the first quarter. As Ford’s Doug Scott put it, “as residential construction goes, so goes the full size pickup sales. There is almost a one-to-one-correlation between those factors.”
The story is much the same at General Motors where the company said its Silverado pickup truck sales increased 28 percent last month over a year ago.
At Chrysler, the Ram pickup sales rose 49 percent over the same comparative dates.