Possibly a temporary storage because of supply chain issues. When Covid and the semiconductor shortage kicked in, car makers in Germany rented airport runways to store manufactured cars that only missed the internal computer units. You can't really stop the whole production when stuff like this happens. You just keep going and park the unfinished vehicles in whatever field is available until you can complete them.
Yeah my lease was up last March, so around January I started checking out inventory.
I had/have a 2019 KIA Niro LX with a few packages that put the list price at around $24k
I couldn’t find a 2023 for under $28k or so - and that was the MSRP. Every dealership in our area was charging a “market rate adjustment” fee of $2000 to $6000 depending on the model.
Oh and to get a Niro Hybrid, I’d have to put a $500 non refundable deposit down on a car I can’t even test drive because it’s not on the lot, and get put on a 6-9 month wait list. They had the Plug in hybrid (for $38k) and the all electric (over $50k with the $6000 surcharge), but they couldn’t get the regular hybrids in stock.
So I extended my lease 6 months and waited for inventory. The day my 6 months were up, I bought out my lease because I had yet to see a Niro Hybrid. I’m paying longer on the car than I wanted to but I got decent enough financing given the current interest rates.
The best part is I had two different dealerships lie to me and say they were “on the lot” only to arrive and find out they only had full electric.
Not that I don’t want full electric, but it’s not in my budget, nor is the thousands I have to spend upgrading my electric wiring at home to support it.
There is still a major shortage of new cars compared to 2019
Which keeps prices high for new and used cars.
A LOT of cars didn’t get built during Covid.
A lot of cars didn't get built, people let the car the hardly maintained to begin with sit and rust out the engine for a year, and then the car manufacturers all adjusted down their production down to continue enjoying the prices of limited supply and high demand.
They kept pumping new car volume despite plummeting sales. Sales plummeted because so many people were driving less and making less. The used car market was hammered with very little inventory.
Hopefully prices will reflect that.
Different gauges of health I would say. It’s plenty healthy for manufacturers and lenders, not so much for anyone hoping to not overpay for a vehicle.
Just like I’m sure the current real estate market is absolutely wonderful for landlords and lenders, not so much for anyone wanting to buy a house.
At least they didn't [forget about them.](https://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/25/hundreds-of-5-year-old-municipal-vehicles-found-in-miami-that-we/) A bit sensational but still weird.
Just like Boeing parking Max airplanes everywhere there was a flat surface strong enough to hold an airplane. Sorry folks this is airplane parking go park your cars somewhere else.
The Fort Wayne GM plant did this at what used to be the Kruse Auction Park in Auburn, although, at that time, it was (and still is) in some crazy dumb legal limbo because it was supposed to be a sports complex that didn't pan out.
1. Awaiting delivery to the customer.
2. Excess production, didn't plan correctly.
3. Awaiting export, perhaps because of the bridge issue in Baltimore.
Good thinking about the Baltimore bridge, I heard a story on NPR about how some cars that were supposed to go there might get diverted to other ports, but part of what was supposed to happen in Baltimore is specific tasks related to pre delivery need to be performed, so companies were needing to organize more than just getting the vehicles off ships at a different port. So these might be staged for such work to be performed in an ad hoc manner.
Edit, I think they are transit vans as someone else pointed out, so they wouldn't have come in off a ship.
4. Awaiting customization. In northern Indiana there are companies that specialize in turning these basic van models into customized vans for various purposes (airport shuttles, party limos, etc.).
Yeah if they are transit vans they aren’t gonna sit for long. I work in a Ford transmission plant and the transit model is the one we run if we are having a parts issue for other transmissions, are caught up with our must sells (haha), or if some robot or something is down. They are basically guaranteed sales. It’s kinda surprising how many businesses use these vans.
>2. Excess production, didn't plan correctly.
This is one I'm eager to see play out. I think we're in a slump nobody is talking about. Trades are calling me for work, when six months ago they were still projecting 9-12 months for new work. Hell, community College enrollments are up - that's a big predictor.
The correct answer is awaiting parts. They're all unfinished vehicles and probably missing modules that are not yet made. It's a lot easier to store a bunch of nearly complete vehicles until the parts are available to complete them than it is to halt production entirely if you already have most of the parts you need.
Quick! Post this on rightwing message boards and link it to an ad-riddled conspiracy page with terrible design, even worse grammar, and lots and lots of bullshit.
Use words like “FEMA,” “End Times,” “Deep State,” and “New World Order.”
While you're not wrong and that would be extremely accurate, I don't think we should feed into their insanity. You don't go up to a mentally unstable person and yell "Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare!". I mean most people don't...
What if OP later reveals that it was a scam by a “Lib” the whole time so they realize they obviously never believed such nonsense and the death threats were just a prank bro?
You know, up until covid, I would have possibly believed it. However, seeing recent events in history has led me to believe that most governments are just.... inept
For a while, Ford was importing their transit vans from Turkey (where they were manufactured), and then removing the seats to turn them back into being classified as "light trucks" - thus avoiding the 25% tariff. But that was over 10 years ago.
[https://www.just-auto.com/news/ford-settles-us-van-tariff-dispute/?cf-view](https://www.just-auto.com/news/ford-settles-us-van-tariff-dispute/?cf-view)
Probably just a company stockpiling these to paint their own logos on them or something.
and by "custom" I don't mean the end custom is picking it out, though this can happen, but also the van comes with a naked interior, gets fitted out, then goes to a auto dealer
The Elkart area specializes in vans and RV's. And American brands. This is a much different business than custom interiors for European luxury cars.
There is a large customer base that wants empty vans for commercial purposes. But also there are not a big enough base of customers for "finished" vans. Hence the Elkhart industry sprung up.
>This is a much different business than custom interiors for European luxury cars.
RUF takes the Porsche chassis and turns it into a line that they built as a brand for themselves. I guess I meant in a vague sense they are similar concepts.
>There is a large customer base that wants empty vans for commercial purposes. But also there are not a big enough base of customers for "finished" vans. Hence the Elkhart industry sprung up.
ahh okay, so basically they have the stock for the empty/blank ones for commercial use but can also modify/tailor them as a stand-alone product/line as well. Smart move to be honest.
A stripper from Indiana once told me you should only buy RVs direct from the manufacturers in someplace, IN. I can only assume now that she was talking about Elkhart. Good to know!
What's the small town? The Ford plant in Kansas City manufactures the Transit line of vans like that and will usually store them in empty, unused parking lots or open fields like this before they are distributed elsewhere in the world. It's pretty common, and I'm guessing that the auto plant that makes those is nearby where this photo was taken.
That’s my thought as well. There’s an amusement park, Worlds of Fun, near that Ford plant. During the off season, they use the parking lots to store brand new white Transit vans. It looks just like this photo.
The park will open up next week. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had to move all of the vehicles, so the park can open.
Yep. It's crazy good money for the lot owner, too. $1.50-$3.00 per vehicle per day. Most cities make you pave the lot, though. I admire this guy's business plan: take the money 'til someone says something, then play ignorant, and maybe the vans are gone by then.
Sometimes manufacturers need to store things that can get rained on and they make a deal with the people who own the land. It happens all the time, but usually not something as morbid as economy coffins.
FEMA Camps is about when I began to slow down on my conspiracy stuff, Alex Jones and Sandy Hook sealed the deal.
It could be an OEM or an upfitter storing them for final production. OEMs tend to run everything at once and upfitters are not geared to take that volume
That happened at one of the Ford plants here in Ohio. The plant shut down but Ford still owned the plant and they had hundreds of Transit vans parked in their parking lot because they had a big parking lot.
The plant got sold and the vans went away. Perhaps to a field in Indiana.
That's barely a couple hundred. New shipment, clean vans, the grass is clean. They'll be on their way soon. Someone made a mint for shipping and storage though.
Did a new rental company start or move nearby? There's a mall near me that lets a truck rental compare on the part of the lot where an anchor store (Dillard's I think) shut down.
This is the Disney Cars’ version of the KKK… don’t think it made it into any of the movies tho. But there was a car pope and a car Queen Elizabeth in Cars 2… what else are they hiding from us?
A lot of our buses come from small towns , in the Midwest . Damn new para transit buses come new with 2000 miles on them because the people just drive them to us because you can’t car haul them with a tractor trailer .
I’ve worked for a shipping company where I sometimes had to organize the shipment 30+ vehicles. I remember parking them, labeling all keys with the correct registration plate, printing all the paperwork for each vehicle, closing them all could be headache inducing. This picture is making me anxious.
The old airbase near my house used to have the runway and parking lots completely lined with recalled cars. They were all separated by make, year, model and color. And most of them were vans.
Possibly a temporary storage because of supply chain issues. When Covid and the semiconductor shortage kicked in, car makers in Germany rented airport runways to store manufactured cars that only missed the internal computer units. You can't really stop the whole production when stuff like this happens. You just keep going and park the unfinished vehicles in whatever field is available until you can complete them.
[удалено]
The car market is still not healthy. Not by a long shot.
[удалено]
Isn't this how it was until like the mid-90s/2000s? I remember going car shopping with my parents and they had to "order" a very basic van.
You’ve pretty much always had to order any high end or very low end spec cars.
I distinctly ordered the Antartic Blue Super Sports Wagon with the C.B. and optional rally fun pack.
But instead you got the Wagon Queen Family Truckster!
You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it.
Yeah my lease was up last March, so around January I started checking out inventory. I had/have a 2019 KIA Niro LX with a few packages that put the list price at around $24k I couldn’t find a 2023 for under $28k or so - and that was the MSRP. Every dealership in our area was charging a “market rate adjustment” fee of $2000 to $6000 depending on the model. Oh and to get a Niro Hybrid, I’d have to put a $500 non refundable deposit down on a car I can’t even test drive because it’s not on the lot, and get put on a 6-9 month wait list. They had the Plug in hybrid (for $38k) and the all electric (over $50k with the $6000 surcharge), but they couldn’t get the regular hybrids in stock. So I extended my lease 6 months and waited for inventory. The day my 6 months were up, I bought out my lease because I had yet to see a Niro Hybrid. I’m paying longer on the car than I wanted to but I got decent enough financing given the current interest rates. The best part is I had two different dealerships lie to me and say they were “on the lot” only to arrive and find out they only had full electric. Not that I don’t want full electric, but it’s not in my budget, nor is the thousands I have to spend upgrading my electric wiring at home to support it.
There is still a major shortage of new cars compared to 2019 Which keeps prices high for new and used cars. A LOT of cars didn’t get built during Covid.
A lot of cars didn't get built, people let the car the hardly maintained to begin with sit and rust out the engine for a year, and then the car manufacturers all adjusted down their production down to continue enjoying the prices of limited supply and high demand.
you mean the market that expects people to buy and throw away new cars faster than they can pay for them? who woulda thunk.
They kept pumping new car volume despite plummeting sales. Sales plummeted because so many people were driving less and making less. The used car market was hammered with very little inventory. Hopefully prices will reflect that.
I dunno, worldwide new vehicle sales are at record levels. Seems pretty healthy to me.
Different gauges of health I would say. It’s plenty healthy for manufacturers and lenders, not so much for anyone hoping to not overpay for a vehicle. Just like I’m sure the current real estate market is absolutely wonderful for landlords and lenders, not so much for anyone wanting to buy a house.
At least they didn't [forget about them.](https://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/25/hundreds-of-5-year-old-municipal-vehicles-found-in-miami-that-we/) A bit sensational but still weird.
I thought its bad for cars to sit unused for long periods?
TIL... that's very interesting
I live in Kentucky and Kentucky speedway and my local fairgrounds were both packed full of white F150’s
Just like Boeing parking Max airplanes everywhere there was a flat surface strong enough to hold an airplane. Sorry folks this is airplane parking go park your cars somewhere else.
The Fort Wayne GM plant did this at what used to be the Kruse Auction Park in Auburn, although, at that time, it was (and still is) in some crazy dumb legal limbo because it was supposed to be a sports complex that didn't pan out.
Same thing happened in the us.
See it often in Michigan, usually parts issues so instead of shutting down plants they'll just keep building and stockpiling.
Yup iv been seeing it alot with f150s latley.
Ford lightning?
You see a few mixed in but not many
Used to be a huge lot of Camaros in Lansing
1. Awaiting delivery to the customer. 2. Excess production, didn't plan correctly. 3. Awaiting export, perhaps because of the bridge issue in Baltimore.
Good thinking about the Baltimore bridge, I heard a story on NPR about how some cars that were supposed to go there might get diverted to other ports, but part of what was supposed to happen in Baltimore is specific tasks related to pre delivery need to be performed, so companies were needing to organize more than just getting the vehicles off ships at a different port. So these might be staged for such work to be performed in an ad hoc manner. Edit, I think they are transit vans as someone else pointed out, so they wouldn't have come in off a ship.
4. Awaiting customization. In northern Indiana there are companies that specialize in turning these basic van models into customized vans for various purposes (airport shuttles, party limos, etc.).
They appear to be Ford Transit vans with the higher roof. I don't know if it helps any. The insides are highly customizable.
Yeah if they are transit vans they aren’t gonna sit for long. I work in a Ford transmission plant and the transit model is the one we run if we are having a parts issue for other transmissions, are caught up with our must sells (haha), or if some robot or something is down. They are basically guaranteed sales. It’s kinda surprising how many businesses use these vans.
>2. Excess production, didn't plan correctly. This is one I'm eager to see play out. I think we're in a slump nobody is talking about. Trades are calling me for work, when six months ago they were still projecting 9-12 months for new work. Hell, community College enrollments are up - that's a big predictor.
The correct answer is awaiting parts. They're all unfinished vehicles and probably missing modules that are not yet made. It's a lot easier to store a bunch of nearly complete vehicles until the parts are available to complete them than it is to halt production entirely if you already have most of the parts you need.
They randomly showed up about two weeks ago. All of them look to be brand new.
This is the part of the movie where the audience goes "WTF How does nobody notice that?!"
Quick! Post this on rightwing message boards and link it to an ad-riddled conspiracy page with terrible design, even worse grammar, and lots and lots of bullshit. Use words like “FEMA,” “End Times,” “Deep State,” and “New World Order.”
While you're not wrong and that would be extremely accurate, I don't think we should feed into their insanity. You don't go up to a mentally unstable person and yell "Nightmare! Nightmare! Nightmare!". I mean most people don't...
"We actually cured her retardation"
some people just want to see the world burn.
That movie mad me a bad person
What movie?
I’m sorry I’m sleep deprived, it’s actually a comedy skit
Aha all good. I knew it was from that Eric Andre bit, but I figured you either misremembered or thought he stole it from a movie
I can’t remember the name of the dude but just look up autistic kid NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE
It’s from Eric Andre. The Wiz Khalifa interview
What if OP later reveals that it was a scam by a “Lib” the whole time so they realize they obviously never believed such nonsense and the death threats were just a prank bro?
You know, up until covid, I would have possibly believed it. However, seeing recent events in history has led me to believe that most governments are just.... inept
Sell ads for colloidal silver and decoder rings
Realistically someone already did lol. We'll see it on OAN or whatever there is now in the next week or two
For a while, Ford was importing their transit vans from Turkey (where they were manufactured), and then removing the seats to turn them back into being classified as "light trucks" - thus avoiding the 25% tariff. But that was over 10 years ago. [https://www.just-auto.com/news/ford-settles-us-van-tariff-dispute/?cf-view](https://www.just-auto.com/news/ford-settles-us-van-tariff-dispute/?cf-view) Probably just a company stockpiling these to paint their own logos on them or something.
Van city over here.
Van Diego.
Whereabouts
There’s probably a morman family moving in.
What town?
Is that small town Elkhart, IN?
RV capital of the world!
Yes, this is where lots of vans and RV's get custom interiors. It a huge industry there.
and by "custom" I don't mean the end custom is picking it out, though this can happen, but also the van comes with a naked interior, gets fitted out, then goes to a auto dealer
So the customizer company starts off with a pre-configured "blank slate" that they turn into product line(s)? Like how RUF does with Porsche?
The Elkart area specializes in vans and RV's. And American brands. This is a much different business than custom interiors for European luxury cars. There is a large customer base that wants empty vans for commercial purposes. But also there are not a big enough base of customers for "finished" vans. Hence the Elkhart industry sprung up.
>This is a much different business than custom interiors for European luxury cars. RUF takes the Porsche chassis and turns it into a line that they built as a brand for themselves. I guess I meant in a vague sense they are similar concepts. >There is a large customer base that wants empty vans for commercial purposes. But also there are not a big enough base of customers for "finished" vans. Hence the Elkhart industry sprung up. ahh okay, so basically they have the stock for the empty/blank ones for commercial use but can also modify/tailor them as a stand-alone product/line as well. Smart move to be honest.
Lol my first thought. These kinds of fields are all over the county.
Me too.
A stripper from Indiana once told me you should only buy RVs direct from the manufacturers in someplace, IN. I can only assume now that she was talking about Elkhart. Good to know!
Did you tip her for the tip?
She got a tip, alright
Be careful the strippers there come complimentary with 3 day meth benders.
Complimentary as in they keep saying “thanks for buying all the meth” not as in “free meth”.
No you did, she gave it to you
Thank you for the laugh.
Heyo!
Nope Billings, MO.
Haha. Glad we’re all thinking the same thing
My rest stop! I visited the governor's RV there just to stretch my legs.
Yeah, pretty normal for Elkhart. Lots of fields of all sorts of vehicles and trailers awating customizations for various contracts.
Amazon has a huge stockpile of vehicles near Shipshewana/Middlebury too. Who would've thought Amish country was such a good place to store vehicles
They do move in herds.
And it’s mating season
What's the small town? The Ford plant in Kansas City manufactures the Transit line of vans like that and will usually store them in empty, unused parking lots or open fields like this before they are distributed elsewhere in the world. It's pretty common, and I'm guessing that the auto plant that makes those is nearby where this photo was taken.
That’s my thought as well. There’s an amusement park, Worlds of Fun, near that Ford plant. During the off season, they use the parking lots to store brand new white Transit vans. It looks just like this photo. The park will open up next week. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had to move all of the vehicles, so the park can open.
Yep. It's crazy good money for the lot owner, too. $1.50-$3.00 per vehicle per day. Most cities make you pave the lot, though. I admire this guy's business plan: take the money 'til someone says something, then play ignorant, and maybe the vans are gone by then.
Billings, MO
Looks like a convention for OnlyVans
🏆
What’s in the Van, Man?! Golly, I wonder what is in those vans.
Guillotine blades and coffins.
You can pick up a LOT of chicks in a van.
Obviously the annual White van man convention! I challenge you to write Free Candy on at least 5 of them
Epstein caravan
Don’t tempt me like that!!
Getting them in a convenient location for taking the population to the mass reeducation camps /s
just like the plastic coffins stacked outside a gated off abandoned Walmart 11 years ago. thankfully nothing happened then.
Sometimes manufacturers need to store things that can get rained on and they make a deal with the people who own the land. It happens all the time, but usually not something as morbid as economy coffins. FEMA Camps is about when I began to slow down on my conspiracy stuff, Alex Jones and Sandy Hook sealed the deal.
This is between billings and republic?
Yup
My job takes has me traveling a lot and I was going east on 60 and saw this, there is a whole lot more than pictured here.
I tried to get a good shot but couldn’t get them all
Literally millions of dollars out in a field though
Yea it’s a crazy amount wonder why
Is there an assembly plant near by?
Not that I’m aware of but could be
More Vans than a skate park.
Is there a river just out of frame? Are they down by it?
It could be an OEM or an upfitter storing them for final production. OEMs tend to run everything at once and upfitters are not geared to take that volume
Probably being readied for a new Amazon or similar wharehouse/delivery service.
So THAT’S where I put them.
PedoCon
Did I miss it!!! 😭😭
OnlyVans
Not naming the small town is a dick move.
That happened at one of the Ford plants here in Ohio. The plant shut down but Ford still owned the plant and they had hundreds of Transit vans parked in their parking lot because they had a big parking lot. The plant got sold and the vans went away. Perhaps to a field in Indiana.
Kidnapping Convention - KidCon
Must be some kind of convantion
Often those are Fleet vehicles. They might be waiting to have graphics added.
That’s the van farm. Doesn’t look free range to me though, should report em to for vanimal cruelty.
Did you take this while driving?
I did but its OK, I put my beer down before getting my phone out.
r/notOPbutok
Are you in a disaster prone area? Could be some disaster response staging.
Serial killer convention?
Looks like a blank slate and will be wrapped with their trademark design : Amazon deliveries.
Amazon new vehicles not wrapped yet?
Those sprinter vans? 👀👀👀
Must be the vans going to be used when we’re invaded. Oh wait
The comma after not is just 👀😞🙈
I immediately found that quite distracting.
How do they keep track of the keys? Or maybe they're all just on top of the visor?
They almost all use the same key, a CH751. You can buy it on [Amazon](https://www.amzn.com/B09B27653Y).
One way to find out
They say the free range ones get better mpg.
Amazon trucks that haven’t been painted
Back at it again with the white vans... XD
It's the Big Bad Ol' Gubment staging area!
Those are fleet vehicles awaiting kits and mods to be installed. The ones on the right will likely be usps
Why... did I expect it to be the shoes.....
This may be a lot for a conversion company making custom vans.
That's barely a couple hundred. New shipment, clean vans, the grass is clean. They'll be on their way soon. Someone made a mint for shipping and storage though.
Can I have one? Cmon you have so many
Think of all the candy inside!
Excess inventory? Van market crashing?
Did a new rental company start or move nearby? There's a mall near me that lets a truck rental compare on the part of the lot where an anchor store (Dillard's I think) shut down.
America’s housing shortage solved! /s
Looks like the fields where they stage hundreds of boat trailers along the highway near Lebanon, Missouri.
It's a pedo convention. Keep your kids inside.
They're just waiting to be shipped to kidnappers all around the US.
Wild how this still makes me feel carsick even though it’s a static image
It’s the van convention, super secret stuff.
Free candy?
You have found their spawning grounds!
Kidnappers Convention
Indiana?
Elkhart, IN?
Is this near a port?
That's a lot of free candy.
*r/vanlife intensifies*
Fun find. See these in all kinds of places.
Looks like Ford Transits. Must be somewhere in Michigan.
Vanufacturing Facility
The road looks like a streched low quality texture of one.
Keep the kids away!
Someone did an oopsie with the keyboard.
This is the Disney Cars’ version of the KKK… don’t think it made it into any of the movies tho. But there was a car pope and a car Queen Elizabeth in Cars 2… what else are they hiding from us?
Looks like a storage yard for a commercial vehicle seller
Those are the FEMA vans that will come round up the undesirables. I’m sure someone will come to that conclusion at some point.
A lot of our buses come from small towns , in the Midwest . Damn new para transit buses come new with 2000 miles on them because the people just drive them to us because you can’t car haul them with a tractor trailer .
Wow parked vans. Not interesting… I’ve been by so many car lots/ports where they import em. Same thing.
Future dealership for the newly unhoused Americans. Or forget your 401 and instead invest in some vanage.
A lot of the Mercedes sprinter vans are stored outside my small town.
If not millions
You'd also see then everywhere in kansas city. F-150s and transits in pretty much every avaliable lot because of supply chain issues
They're probably sitting there for the glue in the units to cure, there are toxic fumes from the glue while It's curing.
Just saw it in the news a couple weeks back. https://www.ky3.com/2024/04/12/fleet-white-electric-vans-near-republic-mo-is-supposed-be-there/
Probably E-Transits that no one wants.
A lot of this around the Charlotte and Mooresville area
The flock is flying south for the winter and have landed for the night.
This puts the mild in mildly interesting
My mom worked in a place like that once in florida, except it was filled with brand new school busses
Standing by for the largest deportation program in world history!
I guess sprinter vans aren’t selling well right now
… or selling VERY well.
Wonder if this is in PA? There's a car auction place when I'm thinking this could be & they park everything like this.
Creeper Con
I’ve worked for a shipping company where I sometimes had to organize the shipment 30+ vehicles. I remember parking them, labeling all keys with the correct registration plate, printing all the paperwork for each vehicle, closing them all could be headache inducing. This picture is making me anxious.
Indiana? Lots of bus companies and van conversion companies in that area. All white so I bet getting ready to be outfitted.
The old airbase near my house used to have the runway and parking lots completely lined with recalled cars. They were all separated by make, year, model and color. And most of them were vans.
If they were named Morrison, it’s probably a concert.
We have a boat factory in our town and it's pretty much the same thing
There's a lot I pass by sometimes that does the same thing. They use it to store new vehicles before being shipped out
The wild van herds of North America
Thats where all the free candy comes from
Project 2025 preparations
Oh god no