Ford Motor Co. announced Monday that it plans to improve production of the upcoming 2015 F-150 pickup truck by adding 850 hourly jobs to its factories in Dearborn, Michigan.
The F-150 is the best-selling vehicle in America, and is scheduled to go into production soon, according to Reuters.
The announcement follows three years after the Michigan-based automaker agreed to create 12,000 hourly jobs in its labor contract with the United Auto Workers union. The company has managed to meet that goal, creating over 14,000 jobs so far.
The 850 new jobs will be provided in three facilities, with over 500 jobs for the truck assembly plant, almost 300 for the stamping factory and over 50 at the diversified operations, Reuters reported.
There will be nearly 5,000 employees working at these three facilities as a result of the addition of new jobs. Joe Hinrichs, Ford President of the Americas, said the new employees are currently in training.
The new F-150 will not be built with the steel bodies that Ford has been using since 1948, and will instead be built with an aluminum body, The Detroit Free Press reported.
Ford plans to start having the pre-production models of the truck run down the full line Oct. 20, but there is a chance that this will take place this week.
While some analysts are worried that the release of the new F-150 could cause several problems for Ford, such as costing the company market share in the segment, Hinrichs said on Monday that the company is currently not experiencing any problems with the launch, Reuters reported.
"Actually, the launch is going very well so far," he said. "Every new-model launch that I've ever been a part of has issues, but actually this launch is going to plan."
Ford fans will have to wait until the end of the year to get their hands on the automaker's new pickup truck.
