Autos
*Despite a rapid deceleration in sales of full-size trucks, Ford will not walk away from the F-150, the industry’s top-seller for 31 years. So says Mark Fields, president of the Americas. With F-Series sales off and the introduction of a new model for 2009 delayed, production will be trimmed by extending scheduled plant shutdowns or eliminating shifts until it’s matched “to demand in an effective manner,” Fields says.
Cycles
*Harley-Davidson has released the route for the parade through Milwaukee celebrating its 105th anniversary Aug. 30. The Parade of Muscular Dystrophy Association Heroes will start at Miller Park and go east on Wisconsin Avenue to Henry Meier Festival Park where Summerfest is held.
*Dallas County, Iowa, has put the brakes on a proposed bicycle policy requiring liability insurance for any organized ride with more than 20 people. Supervisors have met resistance from cyclists who say it would hinder riding clubs and fundraisers that can’t afford the insurance. The issue surfaced after Crawford County paid $350,000 to settle a lawsuit from a woman whose husband died in 2004 during the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.
Lakes
*Great Lakes Shipbuilders have marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Edmund Fitzgerald at Lake Erie Metropark in Wayne County’s Brownstown Township. The 729-foot ore freighter, memorialized in song, sank Nov. 10, 1975, killing 29 men off the northern shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
FYI
*To prop up sales, General Motors is offering zero-percent financing for up to six years on many 2008 cars and trucks. The deal runs through July 7.
*Financial difficulties have grounded Galesburg’s annual Great Balloon Race. Organizer Greg Saul says the event, held the last weekend in July, has lost $8,500 in sponsorship, or about half its budget, in two years. Saul says he will try to float the race, begun in 2000, again next year.
*The largest and most expensive road construction project in Wisconsin, begun in 2004, will be done early and under budget. All lanes and ramps on the Marquette Interchange in downtown Milwaukee will open by the end of August, rather than December.
*Advocates for the blind have asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to set minimum sound standards for new cars and trucks, pointing to potential safety hazards for blind pedestrians who can’t hear silent hybrids. The National Federation of the Blind says hybrids don’t register among traffic sounds the blind use to determine when it’s safe to cross the street. In one experiment, blindfolded listeners couldn’t hear a 2006 Toyota Prius until it was about 11 feet away, compared with a 2004 Honda Accord, detected from about 36 feet.
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Quick Trips are compiled from the notebook of Rick Popely and from Tribune news services.
