I toured the Rouge plant with a group of boy scouts and saw the 1949 car being built. We started at a chassis and the complete car was waiting for us at the end of the tour! We were told everything in the car was made there except the tires! It was an awesome experience! John Hicks

Iron ore in one end. Finished cars out the other. Simply amazing.

This is when our country was a manufacturing king, those days are long gone it's a shame we can't do that anymore Somewhere we lost our way.

This makes me want to cry. As a machinist in the 90s and 00s I watched industry die all around me. I lived in Dayton Oh. It was the #2 or 3 center of industry, invention, machining and mfg for the whole country. Big GM town. Delphi, Wright Patt airforce base. National cash register. The list is almost endless. Its a mere shell of its former self now. We make nothing anymore. I watched NAFTA put a real hurting on our industry too. Great video. Thanks for sharing.

When you got off work, you know you put in a good day's work.

This film must have been done in 1938. The '38 Ford Deluxe is what was being built on the assembly line when filmed. The grill is quite distinctive for that year.

This was fun! I worked there in the 70's & loved every minute of it. Iron ore going in one end & new Mustang 2's going out the other.

Wow even for todays standards that plant even in the 30s was way ahead of it time. How in the hell did they engineer all those machines to build products in a massive scale with no computer just pure intelligence a pen and a draft table. Just blows me away and all American made ! Having been a auto tech and working in the dealer ships flat rate this job would flat wear your body out and turn you into a crippled old man quick. I bet by the time they were in their 40s the body was shot ?Love the video the way things were and they way things will never bee again American made with Pride and Craftsmanship

dear viewers, don't let that music fool you! i work in a steel mill and i can tell you the noise level hovers from 60 to right around 110 decibels. when that furnace drops a charge into the furnace the rumble and noise is a exhilarating experience if youve never been close to it and that sheet steel rolling through the mill roars like constant hammer on a sheet metal table. its just unreal how much noise these production processes make!

I'm happy to see so much manufacturing starting to move back to the US now!

Put off watching this for 2 weeks. I have visited the Rouge (don't go, it will make you cry) and read just about everything about it. Thought this might be nonsense. The footage is excellent, and narration is perfect. If the Boys at the Rouge could go back and watch an Egyptian Pyramid being built, OR, a good group of Egyptian engineers could come forward and observe a day at the Rouge? Who do you think would be more impressed? Don't hate it, because it is American. The River Rouge Ford Plant at full operation was an astounding human achievement. For all mankind, like the Apollo moon landing. It inspires you to think we can do anything! Humans are just incredible. (the lunch wagon footage was new to me. Fantastic!)

All that equipment must have been state of the art then , so high tech , so much work just to make the factory to start with .

Love the guy at 30:27 spraying a pesticide (possibly DDT) in a hand held sprayer in the Ford community garden…

Now we make virtually nothing. A society of computer people and service workers.

I took the full tour of this plant when I was 12 years old in 1964. Henry built every part of his cars. All the glass had Fomoco etched on to it too. At the time I had no idea what that meant till I took this tour.😮 Fords were literally made like baking from scratch. Only Ford grew the wheat, the yeast and everything else it took to do it.

That definitely was an all in one manufacturing facility. That’s quite the documentary.👍👍

I grew up seeing those stacks from my house in the 1960’s. What an exciting time to be a kid. Now Ford has scaled down that amazing plant into something not easily seen from my old home in Dearborn.

Henry ford was absolute genius

Thank you for sharing, I’m 52 years old and I loved this

This is what helped win WWII....

That was beyond awesome. Henry Ford was a truly amazing man. I’m not sure how people survived working on the line for years, but thankfully robotics do a lot of that work now. But for this era, everyone really came together to do outstanding work. Really amazing. Thanks for posting this.

Unbelievably awesome...If you think that the Model T or Model A is piece of mechanical genius, the whole Rouge plant is a machine designed and built by a genius ~ HENRY FORD! Now that's a fantastic machine!

I just flew over the Rouge plant yesterday coming home from Northern Michigan….quite a sight it was…😊.

those iron ore cranes are called huletts we had them here in cleveland ohio

That is such an amazing and interesting video highlighting what the US was capable of. It literally was on another level in terms of achievement. I never want to be the “glass half full” type of person however I can’t help but think of 1999 powerhouse explosion at this same site and how the leadership of this once great company had degraded from when this video was made. Thank you so much for sharing this historic, inspiring and rare film gem.😀👍

Nothing much changed in the production of cars. Apart from humans have been replaced by computers and robots. Thanks for sharing.

Whats amazing is seeing those round circles of usage loads on paper charts. We had those even up to 2000 in the water pumps for public water. It gave use a record of the PUMP running and how far down the water draw was in casing. Great information on recording water and pump usage in 24 hour periods. That and the GMP total pump time on the huge pumps we used to fill elevated water storage tank.

those hulett unloaders moving is like a ballet...

A testament of American industrial might!

I used to haul black iron steel coils out of the mill there every day in the 80's, Mustangs were made there, car frames, had its own rail yard (Ford locomotives) massive place. Even the industrial overhead pictures of Detroit show the Rouge plant. Left Detroit 30 years ago all the auto industry gone now sad.

Today the government won't even build a power plant or update the electric grid.Traitors everywhere.

One of the nine big "Gasteam" engine/generators they used is now on display at the Henry Ford museum. 82 feet long, 46 feet wide, 750 tons. If you like the industrial stuff you see here, you will VERY likely enjoy visiting that extremely large museum.

Absolutely unbelievable. I’ve toured the current Dearborn Truck Plant but it’s nothing like the old days. Proud to have owned Mustangs built at the old Dearborn Assembly and trucks built at the new plant.

Ford even made their own glass and it amazed me it was laminated as well. Maybe that was for the luxury models, because my first 3 Fords Taunus/Cortina in the '70s all had hardened glass. Had one broken once, what a mess it was. Thank you for this upload, it was a joy to watch.

The most MODERN design, manufacturing and machines available (from about 90 years ago) These are the people, engineers, workers and factories which built much of the USA... It's sad to see how much industrial capability has been Lost in the US, as the country's businesses have focused on High-tech & computers, while dismantling or abandoning heavy industry.

Absolutely incredible and not a computer in sight🤠👍

I got a live tour in the 60,s it was amazing to see

To the best of my knowledge, this is the most mind boggling single industrial complex ever. It’s a slight exaggeration, but largely dirt in one end, finished autos out the other, and everything in between produced on site. Unlike anything else I ever heard of.

My great grandfather worked there in the steel division until the early 60s

Thanks for posting this, I remember watching something similar in school back about 1960...

My Grandfather worked there for 39 years. I worked at the Wixom plant for a minute after I got out of the Army.

I toured this plant in the late 70's when I lived in Clinton Twp, MI. It was amazing. I can still remember watching the slabs of steel being turnined into rolls of sheet metal. Watched Mustangs and Carpris going down the same line..

I grew up on Grand River and Shaefer , went on school field trips to River Rouge, Fisher Body and American Motors Assembly.

The '38-'40 Ford Coupes were some of the most beautiful mass-produced cars ever built. Edsel Ford doesn't get enough credit for saving Ford in the 30s.

My Grandfather was a tool and die man there. Worked 3rd shift his whole time there..

awesome-

I can't believe they actually had their own complete steel mill!!!😮

And what about the people who designed the building, the tool, people who made the tools, the assembly line order,method of assembling the parts, the order in which way to join the parts together, the maintenance and tool makers to keep the machines running, the office staff and so on.

Great historic video.. Love it! NOTICE that No one wears Gloves wile doing this work! Today everyone on U Tube wears gloves to do anything.? Says something about how tuff we used to be..

Back when we made things

Thanks for posting. If you're able to edit sound, consider turning it up. I had to turn my volume up to hear the video, then down for each of the ~12+ commercial breaks.

I dont think Ford could have done this today with all the regulation, taxes, and red tape we have now.

Loved it.

I was there on a field trip, I think it was the 7th grade from Point Place Junior High, in Toledo, OH, and the most prevalent memory was the white hot raw steel coming out of the furnace! Nothing like it in the US anymore, it was awesome, raw materials entered one end, then complete automobiles emerged from the other, not quite, but close enough!

At one time they had coal, iron, rubber and wood coming in one end and model T's rolling out the other. ❤

The assembly line waits for no one.

People worked with pride back then

Back in the day when the man could work and support a large family. How did we get where we are today?

Great video, thanks for sharing. Imagine how much today's renewable energy it would take to power this machinery. Somehow I don't think it would get anywhere close? 🤔

Cool I was listening to Elon musk say why he was able to make electric cars more affordable than all the other people is because he had adopted Ford original design of in-house manufacturing, and he said this was what was making him excel above all all other electric car makers, This was a really cool video to watch. Thank you very much.

Love these old shows with that music. Lots of automation here which really is just the forerunner for robots for all the people bitching here.

I'd like to remind all the folks who are "sad" and want to "cry" that there are currently forty-five auto assembly plants in the U.S. There are eleven GM and eight Ford plants alone. Maybe you won't find blast furnaces or molten steel casting works in any of them (they don't need them anymore), but they are still cranking out millions of cars every year.

I work for Nicholson dock and terminal and went to the Ford River rouge plant for work on there of Ford's ship's the Benson the Henry and the breach were there name's. That was back in 1979.

Love the Huletts

Been through there many times

The Ford automobile was named after Mr. Henry Ford of Detroit, Michigan who pioneered the assembly line method of automobile manufacturing.

Looking at what they had to do to build a car back then, no machine aids to lift parts, or all the automatic screw drivers and ratchets, everything was done by hand. They worked hard back then. Todays car workers haven't a clue what it was like to build a car. Stick them back in that time and they would have a melt down and quit. It was amazing how Ford created everything for their cars, Ford even had rubber farms to make the tires and hoses with. I doubt there would be any car company today that could do all their own components with all the electronics in them. Looking back, it is understandable why engines didn't last as long, they were basically all hand made, today they are pretty much all done by computers and machines, and they last 3-4 times as long if not longer. My Ford Flex has 176,000+ miles on its 3.5 Ecoboost and it runs just as good as it did when new, and it is 10 years old, not a drop of oil burned, and lots of power. Ford pioneered the assembly lines, and this video shows it all.

2:30 Hulett ore unloaders in action.

Those were the days!

You should add the beautiful Charles Sheeler photos and Precisionist paintings.

At 14:27 this is the example of the term BLUE COLLAR worker and WHITE COLLAR supervisor.

Real American strength!

The problem was that the employees didn’t know how good they had it

if ford is making a v8 an chevy only has a straight 6.no wonder dillenger car of choice was a ford.he even wrote ford a letter telling them how much he loved that v8

The Charles Sheeler photographs record a more impressive view of the Rouge complex.

Brand new for 38. Handsome automobiles

52 types of steel??!!! holy hell

We have parts for a car made in 10 different countries now. They make them so we have no hope of fixing them without removing the bodies first, or having a way to drop an engine out the bottom. We are better off now how? Spare us the ,"oh they last longer" are more fuel efficient bs. The modular efficiency of resources brought to one plant and being finished there to an end product, saved so much in transportation and logistic. Being able to repair is Eco friendly.

One version of hell if you had to work there. Like Dante’s Inferno. My God. Talk about soul-killing work….😱🙏😡

i loved the video wood bee sweat to see in real life

Turning the earth’s resources into comfort and convenience for an ever-increasing number of humans. How long could that be continued?

Jesus, by today's standards and methodologies, those things were practically hand built back then.

Incredible video. But what mind numbing repetitive work. Can you imagine working there for 30 years?

This was before Ford recognized had recognized the UAW.

Can you imagine the size and scale of that place.

The absolute greatest time for the majority of Americans

I worked there for a spell in the late 1970s. It’s good to know that the car companies dumped quality control for Quality Assurance. Smart move.

That’s where I work 😊

What is he looking at @1:40? He is holding up something to look at something he adjusted?

By the time I got to blast furnace and coke ovens in 78 79 those old Huletts where the operator rides the bucket in and out of the hold where gone. the boats were self unloaders . now C furnace is the only one left. and great lakes and Ecorse are gone.

!938 Ford Deluxe Sedan assembly line - right ? Ford guys will know for sure. I'm not a true Ford guy, a just love of cars in general & car assembly plants for me

I can't imagine that the engine block casting procedure is much different in 2024.

Truly the way we were 🇺🇸👍. Sadly, NOT the way we are today 😕

I have always wondered if the guys hand hammering frames and rivets together were hard of hearing after a couple days on the line ?

Good video but they left out an important step, the electrical wiring harness?

When was this documentary made?

They forgot the touchscreen airbags battery pack and electric motors!

Basically all made in Mexico now. Liked the film though, bean counters are job#1 @ Ford now.

impressive.....the only thing that seems to be outsourced are the tires and the light bulbs.....

Great find but can ya fix the sound level please.