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America’s top-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150, bears the brunt of metal-supply-chain woes

For Texas Ford dealer Sam Pack, the F-150 and Super Duty trucks aren’t just important vehicles—he says they are the “foundation” of his business. That is why Pack, who owns four stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is a little nervous right now.

Pack’s truck supply is limited because of a shortage of aluminum that is roiling the entire auto industry. He has about 42 days’ worth of F-150 inventory, down from the 60 days he normally maintains. “We’d love to have more,” he said.

Pack worries about having enough trucks for the busy summer season. “The real critical period is going to be the next 90 days,” he said.

The trucks are in short supply because aluminum, the metal used to make their bodies, is in short supply—and sharply more expensive than in years past. Aluminum has become a key commodity for automakers looking to boost the fuel economy and efficiency of their vehicles with a metal that is lighter than steel and doesn’t sacrifice strength.

The auto industry in North America consumed 3.7 million metric tons of aluminum last year, nearly 30% more than in 2020, according to metals-market consulting firm CRU.

Lately, however, higher aluminum prices from the Iran war, a 50% U.S. tariff and a production outage by a major supplier have strained automakers.

“The cost of metals, specifically aluminum, has been a big focus for us,” RJ Scaringe, chief executive of electric-vehicle maker Rivian Automotive, said on an earnings call last week.

The U.S. cost of primary aluminum from smelters is nearly 90% higher than a year ago. The war in Iran is driving up prices by effectively choking off shipments from the Persian Gulf countries, which supply about one-fifth of the aluminum consumed in the U.S.

The U.S. aluminum industry is also heavily dependent on imported primary aluminum, mostly from Canada, but automakers and other buyers pay the tariff no matter where the metal comes from. With the global aluminum price at about $3,500 a metric ton, the tariff and delivery-related charges raise the U.S. price to $6,100, compared with $3,220 paid a year ago, according to S&P Global Energy.

The pain is especially acute at Ford. The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker switched the F-150—America’s bestselling vehicle—to an aluminum exterior body from steel in 2014.

At the time, Ford Motor F -1.66%decrease; red down pointing triangle and other automakers faced ever-stricter federal fuel-economy regulations. Coupled with smaller, more efficient engines, the aluminum F-150 delivered between 5% and 29% better fuel economy than the previous model. In the process, Ford became the auto industry’s biggest aluminum buyer.

A decade later, that has become a liability for Ford, compounded by multiple fires last fall at its main aluminum supplier in upstate New York. Shutdowns at the plant, which is operated by Atlanta-based Novelis, hit Ford’s bottom line hard, reducing adjusted profit last year by $2 billion.

Ford executives said on an earnings call this past week that the company has doubled its expected commodity costs from $1 billion this year to $2 billion, largely because of rising aluminum costs.

Ford sold about 160,000 F-Series trucks in the first quarter of this year, down from 190,000 the same period last year, according to Motor Intelligence.

The company said it expects to build an additional 150,000 trucks this year over 2025’s reduced volume to make up for the aluminum plant outage.

“Ford has a much larger exposure to aluminum costs than anybody else,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president of consulting firm AutoForecast Solutions.

Ford said last week that it expects the aluminum rolling line at the Oswego, N.Y., plant to restart this month, although Novelis had earlier set a late June target. Whenever production resumes, it will be gradual and won’t replenish supplies right away.

“If we have any hiccups, we have contingency plans,” Ford’s Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra told industry analysts last week. “We have additional aluminum supply to ensure our plant production schedules aren’t interrupted.”

Ford recently asked the Trump administration to waive the 50% tariff on imported aluminum until the Oswego plant returns to full service, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. So far, administration officials haven’t budged.

The head of the U.S.’s largest supplier of automotive steel suggested in April that the situation is causing automakers to rethink their dependence on aluminum. “I have never seen so much momentum in substituting aluminum for steel,” said Lourenco Goncalves, chief executive of steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs.

Yet even as automakers no longer face the strict fuel-economy rules they did in the Biden years, others say there is no evidence of a widespread move back to steel. “I don’t believe you’re going to see it,” said Mark Millett, chief executive of Steel Dynamics, which also supplies the auto industry with aluminum.

Millett said the cost of engineering and retooling the equipment that makes aluminum components to produce steel parts instead would be expensive and time-consuming.

Analyst Fiorani agreed, especially in Ford’s case. “They built that vehicle around aluminum. It’s going to be very difficult to change its body structure,” he said.