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Sales drop clouds the picture at St. Paul Ford plant
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The Ford Ranger didn't do the workers at the St. Paul plant where it's made any favors last month. Sales for the compact Ranger truck fell 33.8 percent to 4,882 units in June compared with the same month a year ago. For the first half, Ford sold 41,303 Rangers, down 3.9 percent.
The Ranger did better than Ford's gas-guzzling F-series trucks, which fell 40.5 percent in June to 38,789 units. Year-to-date F-series sales are down 22.7 percent to 274,713.
Still, the Ranger results disappointed local observers, who are hoping Ford will once again postpone the closing of the Ranger factory.
The plant, which employs roughly 1,060, is scheduled to close in September 2009. Ford officials recently told state officials that they are studying the economics of keeping the plant open a couple of more years. Ranger sales had picked up during the first four months of 2008 thanks to Canadian and U.S. drivers turning to more fuel-efficient trucks in the wake of $4 gas.
But then Ranger sales dropped two months in a row, making the plant's future less certain.
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