Thank you for the concern, I am in fact alive and well. Incidentally, I'm not in Louisana nor the path of said hurricane
A few updates
1. D1 Status - Since we have been explicitly told to ignore the build dates assigned, there is no value in posting the new D1 dates. There hasn't been any significant drop of dates like those first few, it's a slow trickle, and none of it makes sense. Let me be clear. We were told to IGNORE the dates. We weren't told to take them with a grain of salt, or to take them lightly, or to plus or minus a week. The word was IGNORE. So in the same fashion that I don't repost unbacked intel, I'll also not post items that I know are factually incorrect. Once we see SOME helpful correlation between D1 and production, we can start back up with that. If you have a properly placed sold order with your name/email/etc on it - you should be getting automated emails from RAM if YOUR vehicle hits D1 status regardless, but beyond that, we're in the dark.
2. Forged Blue - Here's some good news, almost all the forged blue orders that we placed now have VIN #s! I think like 3 were missing out of the 25 or so. This is all the ones that were ordered as forged, not change-requests.
3. Graphics - Late last week the hood graphics and exterior graphics were removed from the ordering software without any memo or alert on it. This is not uncommon, same thing happened to ramboxes on laramie/rebel two weeks ago. If you have an order with these items on it - I would not be concerned. If they truly can't complete the order as such, they will have to alert us to etiher remove the item or cancel the order (see onboard power system situation back in July).
4. Production - We have still just those 7 trucks in production, though one made it through all the way to body-vendor so that's a nice sign. how long they hold there, TBD.
5. Sequencing - Still no official word back on why so many recent orders appear in D1 before older orders, or what if anything can be done about it. This was communicated from people way above my paygrade to people way up in the ranks - not just me texting my buddy rep. I don't expect to get a copy of their response, and I may never hear explicitly what was said, we may just see results or not. My purpose in sharing that info was to express that within Mark Dodge, we are doing everything we can. It has the full attention of our owner. Mind you, we are a single owner single property single brand dealership. Everyone in the building, and their entire families, know what's happening here lol. For US, this is not a problem that is getting lost in the shuffle - we are fully aware and engaged. While we are having fantastic results the last few months in a row, we are counting on those deliveries to make our Q4/Q1 what they need to be to meet our internal strategies and continue sharing those efficiencies with customers over and over again. We didn't build an entire PDI facility to sleep in it.
Given the fact that production is at somewhere around a half of a percent of the total orders and we were explicitly told that the published build dates, I know this is easier said than done... lets stay positive. I know that personally (and can say with pretty strong probability that Ashley did similar) I told
every single customer that my personal estimate was Q4 to START and then as the months went on, that window expanded into '25. I know many of you are hoping to obtain the vehicle for tax advantages in this calendar year, which is a problem I HOPE to have some day lol - and I hope that this can be achieved as well. That's still 90 days from now, which within that time I could order you 2 3500 megacabs back and they'd be here... meaning.... it could still happen!
I also got a few questions today about the potential (strong) for a port-strike by the longshoremen. Dude. Our trucks come from Detroit to Port Allen Louisana which as far as I can tell would not be directly effected, BUT there is always the chance for a ripple effect of diversion of resources, but wildly too soon to tell. And hey, we don't have RHO's on trains yet to worry about
That's all I can think of for now. Oh yeah, take your vitamins and listen to some Kris Kristofferson if you can today, we lost a legend.
I am so happy with my past decisions to find a truck on a dealer lot. This pre ordering a truck is a nightmare you miss out on.
