Column: Henry Ford, the Elon Musk of his day

Dear readers,

After last week’s embarrassing little episode where I had to apologize to the lawyer robot, I decided to get out of town for a while. I told Johnny that I needed a travel assignment.

Johnny reminded me that Giant FM’s feature contributor covering the travel beat is Carol McDaniel. He told me that maybe I should stick to “whatever it is” that I write about every week. Johnny added, “just make sure you don’t cover the same destination as Carol.” 

“OK boss,” I said, as I left the building. I was headed to Detroit. I didn’t have to check with Carol. I already knew that she and her Shelby Senior Services crew were already packing for their trip to Portugal next month.

Motor City! I know what some of you are thinking. 

“Hey Kris, Giant FM is a country station. Shouldn’t you be headed to Nashville instead of Motown?” 

You do have a point. When I think of Detroit, Smokey Robison, Diana Ross and other Motown greats do come to mind. They are all products of Detroit along with Aretha Franklin and her famous pink Cadillac she drove on the “Freeway of Love.”

So why is Detroit my destination? Ever since I started here at Giant FM, I noticed that I have been thinking about pickup trucks. At first, I couldn’t figure out why. Then one day, I realized it must be from listening to so much country music. They are all singing about pickup trucks, from Brad Paisley’s “Mud on the Tires,” to Jason Aldean’s, “Take a Little Ride,” to the not so subtle Tim McGraw’s “Truck Yeah.” 

Detroit is where pickup trucks are made, specifically Ford pickup trucks. The Ford pickup has been the best-selling truck in America for 46 consecutive years. In fact, the Ford pickup has been the best-selling motor vehicle in America for 41 years.

About a hundred years ago during the Roaring Twenties when Tallulah Bankhead and Zelda Fitzgerald were competing to see who could drink the most bathtub gin, Henry Ford was building a giant factory in Detroit.  It is located along the Rouge River, so Ford called it “The Rouge.” 

On a side note, the area was first settled by the French, thus the use of rouge for red. If the Spanish had named the river, Ford’s famous factory would no doubt be called “The Rojo.” 

In its heyday, Ford employed 100,000 people at The Rouge. Raw materials including coal, iron ore, and rubber arrived at the docks on one end of the factory and motor vehicles came out the other end.  Everything needed to make a motor vehicle, including the tires and windows, was manufactured on site. 

The Rouge complex included 93 buildings and totaled 16 million square feet. Elon Musk’s “Gigafactory Texas” has 10 million square feet of floor space -- although it is all in one building.

Touring The Rouge is quite an experience. It is amazing to see several thousand people working together on the assembly line and producing a brand-new shiny Ford pickup every 53 seconds. 

I wanted to include a photo of a newborn truck, but taking photos is not allowed. I included a photo of the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile instead.  It is on display at the Ford Museum where photos are allowed.

The day after I returned from my trip, I was telling Johnny McCrory, the morning DJ here at Giant FM, about how country musicians are obsessed with pickup trucks. All they sing about is pickup trucks. I told Johnny how listing to country music these past few weeks had given me a bad case of pickup truck on the brain. 

In between spinning tunes, Johnny told me that if I thought country musicians just sing about pickup trucks then maybe I hadn’t listened to enough country music. Johnny then put Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” on the turntable.

I haven’t thought about pickup trucks since.

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.

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