The automotive supply chain crisis for chuckleheads: a cheat-sheet for clueless would-be Ford Maverick owners

Not so long ago, before the automotive supply chain crisis, we didn’t know how good we had it. We could just mosey on down to the nearest car dealer and expect to find actual inventory for virtually any model in the current lineup of the automaker that the dealer sells, with a range of options packages to choose from.

And even if we could not find quite what we wanted on the lot, we could at least put in a custom order for the exact build we wanted, and expect delivery in maybe four to six weeks.

But then Covid-19 happened. And the resulting global factory closures or slowdowns happened. And the chip shortage happened. And all of the series of events happened that led to the automotive supply chain crisis, of which we are still in the midst.

One side effect of the automotive supply chain crisis is that some of us are learning more about the jargon and operational minutiae of automotive order fulfillment and production management processes and procedures than we ever wanted or expected to know.

Take me, for example. On September 17, 2022, I placed my order for a 2023 Ford Maverick XL hybrid truck. As of today, February 11, 2023—nearly five months later—my order apparently still has yet to be previewed at the factory. No VIN has been issued—the milestone at which you can be pretty certain that the vehicle you ordered will actually be scheduled for production and built.

With the Ford Maverick, the endless wait to have orders scheduled has spawned its own little subculture of frustrated would-be owners of Mavericks—especially hybrid Mavericks—who are commiserating and talking shop about all the details of Ford’s protracted and byzantine production management and scheduling process as they wait for vehicles that might end never being built.

For instance, the Ford Maverick Truck Club Forum contains extensive threads about Ford’s process of vehicle ordering and scheduling, as well as posts from thousands of members at varying stages in that process sharing their experiences and exchanging information about what is happening with their orders.

In another example, the quandary of consumers waiting for their orders for Mavericks—and other models for which Ford is struggling to keep up with demand, like Broncos and F-150 Lightnings—has also inspired one Tim Bartz, aka Ford Video Guy, an Internet sales manager at Long McArthur Ford in Salina, KS, to devote most the content of his podcast and YouTube Channel to the topic.

Roughly every week, Bartz devotes sometimes more than two hours to answering questions from audience members who are trying to make sense of what is happening with their long-delayed Ford orders—mostly Mavericks.

Take the following question read by Bartz’s co-host during this week’s edition: “R.G. says it was a 9/20/22 order [which, by the way, was only four days after Ford opened the order window for the 2023 Maverick], so it may never get produced.”

Bartz replied, “Ooh, yeah. And I know you want to get into a Maverick, so you might be better off just waiting to see if one becomes available [at a dealer due, for example, to a customer opting to not take delivery of an ordered vehicle that has actually arrived].”

Apparently, in the Quixotic quest to order a Ford Maverick, if you snooze you lose, with four days into the ordering window apparently too late.

If you are one of these unfortunate souls like me who is waiting and wondering whether this unicorn of a vehicle that you have ordered will ever materialize from vapor into sheet metal, here are a few apparently Ford-specific terms you might want to know.

Allocation: A number, received by each Ford dealer in a weekly report, of vehicles of each model that Ford will schedule for production for that individual dealer, for fulfillment of individual customer orders or dealer stock orders. Apparently, not all Ford dealers are created equal when it comes to allocations, which are assigned based on past sales history. It is entirely conceivable, for example, that a small dealer in a small market may receive NO allocations for models like the Maverick and Bronco that are in scarce supply.

Constraint: A percentage value indicating the proportion of the order queue for vehicles of a particular model that can be built with some specific feature. For example, according to Bartz, the current constraint for the hybrid Maverick, as opposed to the all-gas-powered Eco-Boost models, is 35%–which means that Ford believes they have the capacity to equip only 35% of the 2023 Mavericks they will produce with the hybrid powertrain—the rest will all need to be 100% internal combustion.

Other constraints, according to Bartz as well my sales rep at the dealer where I placed my order, include accessories like tonneau covers or drop-in bed liners. Many Ford dealers are apparently advising customers to order as few factory accessories as possible to expedite their orders or even increase the odds that their vehicles will even be produced.

Preview: The event of a customer’s order being opened at the factory and assessed for potential entry into the production schedule. If you have an in-process order with Ford, your dealer may be able to tell you whether the order has been previewed, which is a nice indication that your order has at least shown some movement in the queue.

Priority Code: A numeric value you will find populating a field on the order sheet your Ford dealer will give you after you place an order. For ordinary consumers like us as opposed to, say, fleet purchasers, the priority code should be between 10 and 19 when you initially order, with lower numbers being better. Mine, sadly, started out as a 19, so I guess my chances of getting my truck are pretty slim.

USOB: An acronym for “unscheduled order bank,” meaning the set of orders that have been received from dealers but not yet reviewed, assigned a VIN, and scheduled for production.

So, now that you know  some of these terms that thousands of frustrated owners of in-demand but scarce Ford vehicles have come to know during the current automotive supply chain crisis, do you feel edified and enlightened?

Me neither.

I wish I did not have to know them. We are in a weird situation that would have been virtually impossible to imagine before Covid and its economic sequelae descended upon the world, a strange, new dystopian world where people who want cars and have the means and desire to buy them can’t get them, or at least not the cars of their choice.

It almost makes you think of the stories that some of us are old enough to remember of the old Soviet Union, with the inefficiencies of a command-and-control economic system leading to long lines for basic necessities like toilet paper.

Oh, wait. That happened in 2020 too.

But this time it is not the Red Menace of communism to blame, although one could certainly make the case that other questionable economic and industrial policies, such as over-reliance on international sources of essential commodities like microprocessor chips, are at fault.

Let’s just hope this crisis resolves soon, before people like me who think the Maverick hybrid was one of Ford’s most genius ideas in decades simply get frustrated with the waiting and opt instead to slap down a few grand more, sacrifice the economic and environmental benefits of a hybrid, and settle for a compact truck that we can actually touch and sit our butts down in, like a Hyundai Santa Cruz.