By Bob Tita
What happens when one of a company's biggest customers becomes
one of its biggest rivals?
Navistar International Corp., a Lisle, Ill., commercial truck
maker, is about to find out. For the past 13 years, Navistar built
Ford Motor Co.'s F-650 and F-750 commercial trucks, an
approximately $400 million-a-year business. Beginning next year,
Ford plans to start making the $55,600-and-up vehicles itself,
cutting out Navistar.
Chief Executive Troy Clarke plans to patch the hole in
production and revenue by chasing high-volume, medium-truck buyers
such as big rental companies, municipalities and distributors. His
idea: offer customers a wider variety of engine brands and
transmissions, allowing them to customize trucks to their specific
needs. He is pressing Navistar's dealers to emphasize the $10.5
billion company's single focus on commercial trucks.
Trying to hold on to customers in the medium-size truck business
is one more hurdle for Mr. Clarke, who became CEO after his
predecessor's costly detour into building pollution-control systems
for the firm's truck engines collapsed and Navistar was forced to
abandon the effort. To win customers back, Navistar is offering
engines made by Cummins Inc. and the same exhaust treatment system
the rest of the industry uses. Navistar previously had offered only
its own engines in its trucks.
"We are recovering our share, but we have more work to do," said
Mr. Clarke, a former General Motors Co. executive who was appointed
CEO in March 2013. The company has been losing money for more than
a year, and posted a $248 million loss for its fiscal first quarter
on $2.2 billion in sales.
Besides the troubles with its heavy-duty trucks, Navistar also
has been losing market share for medium-duty trucks, or those that
can carry up to 33,000 pounds. Its DuraStar and WorkStar trucks now
account for about 26% of the North American medium-duty market, but
that share is down from nearly 36% in 2011.
Medium-duty trucks are used as the underpinnings for many
delivery vehicles, dump trucks, recreational vehicles and school
buses. Market forecaster John Stark in Chicago called Ford's March
decision to build its own vehicles a "real threat" to Navistar.
"Ford has made all the investments to be a serious player in the
market," he said.
Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford's coming trucks would share engines,
transmissions and cab components with its other F-series vehicles
to build economies of scale. Ford had been selling trucks built in
Mexico by the two companies' joint venture, known as Blue Diamond
Truck, since 2001. In 2015, Ford will start making new versions of
the F-650 and F-750 at an existing E-series van factory in Avon
Lake, Ohio.
"We're going to be everywhere in the market," said Todd Kaufman,
director of F-series truck marketing at Ford. "We're not going to
take a back seat to anybody" in the truck market.
He said the company intends to market its new trucks to the same
truck and rental fleet operators courted by Navistar and others. To
ease apprehension about trying the new designs, Ford plans to offer
a five-year, 250,000-mile warranty on engines and transmissions,
about double the industry's standard warranty. Ford intends to
control costs by sharing cab components from its F-350 and F-450
pickup trucks.
Ford also will leverage its dealership network to support the
new vehicles. About 600 of Ford's 3,000 U.S. dealers sell its
commercial truck brands, and all of its dealers will be capable of
repairing the F-650 and F-750 vehicles. "They'll be a big drawing
card," said Charlie Gilchrist, president of Southwest Ford near
Fort Worth, Texas.
Lee Dill, president of Circle D Truck Sales in Abilene, Texas,
expects the coming Ford trucks to cost about $5,000 less than
rivals because Ford is using in-house components and assembly. A
Ford spokesman declined to comment on the pricing.
"After we found out they're going to be offering a purely Ford
product, we're going to buy quite a few of them," said Mr. Dill. He
said Ford's five-year powertrain warranty takes away much of
buyers' uncertainty about the new models.
Navistar said it has no plans to increase its warranty
incentives to drive medium-truck sales and is counting on the wider
range of engine, drivetrain and other options to increase its share
in heavy- and medium-duty trucks.
"The real advantage we have is purposely built commercial
trucks, and we have dealers who are solely focused on commercial
trucks," said Jack Allen, chief operating officer. "Those are
inherent advantages over an auto-based truck dealer."
Navistar loyalists such as Daniel Murphy, president of Idealease
Inc. in North Barrington, Ill., said orders for Navistar's
medium-duty trucks are up 21% since the company began offering
Cummins' 6.7-liter engines in the trucks in September.
"We came through a bad patch, but we've learned," agreed dealer
Drew Linn, owner of Southland International in Alabama. "Having the
Cummins engines has opened some doors with new customers for us and
calmed some fears with existing customers."
Write to Bob Tita at robert.tita@wsj.com
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