Ford Ford - Steve Plucker

But what kind of paperwork did Ford preparebefore shipping that car or truck fromthe assembly plant to a dealer? These documentsare represented by the Ford MotorCompany’s Buffalo Assembly Plant inNew York.Factory Bills of Sale, as seen below, canprovide us with some of the historical datathat may have been lost in the Archivesfire. Besides the cost of things, thisFactory Bill of Sale, Invoice numberF87575, relates that the car is a TownSedan with engine number A3308654(which was stamped at the Rouge Plant onMay 1, 1930). On May 6, 1930, the completedcar was sold to Brown andMcCooey, Inc., in Randolph, New York.It took just five days from the time theengine was stamped and related parts leftthe Rouge factory to go the 365 miles tothe Buffalo, New York assembly plantwhere it was assembled and out the door.What else does the Bill of Sale tell us? Ittells us of the ignition key number thatwas associated with the car, A891 and adoor key, A1139. However, most assemblyplant Bills of Sale that were vieweddid not have the key codes on them. Thosewere mainly recorded on the dealershipBill of Sales.The only difference between the factoryand dealership Bills of Sale were theappearance of the slips themselves. Somedealership Bills of Sale were professionallydone, while others were simply handwrittenreceipts. Both included the keycodes numbers as recommended by Ford.According to the May 16, 1928 notificationfrom the Fargo, North Dakota, servicebranch to the dealers, it related that “Inorder to eliminate the possibility of inconvenienceto your A and AA ownersthrough loss of door locks and ignitionswitch keys, we recommend that youplace the key numbers required for the caror truck on the bill of sale.” Apparentlythis was not being done by some Forddealers and in the February 20, 1929,Indianapolis Service Letter, Ford issuedanother statement requesting that this bedone in order to let customers know justwhat their key codes were in case theyfound it necessary to replace them.Unlike the Factory Bills of Sale, trying toestablish an assembly time of a vehicle inviewing Dealership Bills of Sale, is kindof hard to do taking into consideration the12 The Restorer • May/June 2006amount of time the vehicle sat on the dealershipslots or maybe it was used as ademonstrator vehicle for a series ofmonths.So just how long did it take to assemblethat Model A/AA Ford? One has to look atthe data very objectively. Was that enginesent to the assembly line immediatelyupon its arrival to the assembly plant orwas it stuck in the corner only to beretrieved one to eight weeks later or morebefore assembly? Did the completed vehicleget sent immediately to a dealer afterassembly or did it sit around the assemblyplant for one to eight weeks or more waitingto get picked up by a dealer? Hard totell.The chart on page 11 gives us some ideaof just how many days it took to assemblea Model A or AA Ford at the variousassembly plants from the time the enginewas stamped at the Rouge Factory inDearborn, Michigan, thus being receivedat the assembly plants themselves and thecompleted vehicle out the door. The datacame from a number of original FordFactory (Assembly Plant) Bills of Sale todealerships.The farther the assembly plant was fromthe Rouge Factory in Dearborn, the longerthe time it was in getting the vehicles offthe assembly lines and into the dealershands.I would like to thank Jerry Bengel, NeilBesougloff, Hilding Larson, Jim Spawn,Dave Sturges and Lynn White for theirthoughts and contributions to this article.I would also like to thank those of youwho have contributed the many FordFactory and Dealership Bills of Sale thatwere used to arrive at the data that wasused in this article including RayBeardslee, Rich Bell, Arlyn Bieber, ClemClement, Dean Drenzek, Martin Hanshew,Clif Moebius, Jerry Parr, Tom Pearson,Todd Smith, Lou Tull, Tom Wesenberg,Mark Williamson and Peter Winnewisser.This is an ongoing study. I hope that thoseof you who have original Ford Factoryand Dealership Bills of Sale will contributeyour data to this study, which willbe put into a data base for future generationsto come. Please contact me atsteve@plucks329s.org and visit my website at www.plucks329s.org for furtherinformation.