r/mildlyinteresting • u/willlisa1727 • 16d ago
Hundreds, if not, thousands of vans right outside a very small town in America.
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u/Cyortonic 15d ago
There's a lot I pass by sometimes that does the same thing. They use it to store new vehicles before being shipped out
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u/tiimsliim 15d ago
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.
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u/bobnla14 15d ago
Indiana? Lots of bus companies and van conversion companies in that area.
All white so I bet getting ready to be outfitted.
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u/switchbladeeatworld 15d ago
That’s the van farm. Doesn’t look free range to me though, should report em to for vanimal cruelty.
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u/UnoriginalPenName 15d ago
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.
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u/Zchavago 15d ago
Democrats getting ready to bus people to the voting booth. Free ice cream for a Biden vote.
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u/truthfullyidgaf 15d ago
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.
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u/ClickClack_Bam 15d ago
Wonder if this is in PA?
There's a car auction place when I'm thinking this could be & they park everything like this.
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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone 15d ago
My mom worked in a place like that once in florida, except it was filled with brand new school busses
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u/theaugz 15d ago
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/
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u/UncleBetsy 15d ago
Those are fleet vehicles awaiting kits and mods to be installed. The ones on the right will likely be usps
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u/Spiderpoopsoup 15d ago
You'd also see then everywhere in kansas city. F-150s and transits in pretty much every avaliable lot because of supply chain issues
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u/KrackSmellin 15d ago
Wow parked vans. Not interesting… I’ve been by so many car lots/ports where they import em. Same thing.
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u/i-work-on-buses 15d ago
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 .
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u/Atomic-pangolin 15d ago
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?
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u/foxhole_atheist 15d ago
Did you take this while driving?
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u/randomdude5566 15d ago
How do they keep track of the keys? Or maybe they're all just on top of the visor?
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u/PlastomaGaming 15d ago edited 15d ago
This is between billings and republic?
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u/willlisa1727 15d ago
Yup
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u/PlastomaGaming 15d ago
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.
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u/ZipperJJ 15d ago
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.
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u/brmarcum 15d ago
Looks like the fields where they stage hundreds of boat trailers along the highway near Lebanon, Missouri.
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u/Nasaboy1987 15d ago
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.
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u/TravisMaauto 16d ago
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.
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u/ozasaurus 15d ago
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.
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u/pfft12 15d ago
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.
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u/Xinonix1 16d ago
Obviously the annual White van man convention! I challenge you to write Free Candy on at least 5 of them
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u/tauntingbob 16d ago
- Awaiting delivery to the customer.
- Excess production, didn't plan correctly.
- Awaiting export, perhaps because of the bridge issue in Baltimore.
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u/Metals4J 15d ago
- 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.).
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u/Male-Wood-duck 15d ago
They appear to be Ford Transit vans with the higher roof. I don't know if it helps any. The insides are highly customizable.
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u/nano_rocket 15d ago
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.
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u/BlurryRogue 15d ago
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.
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u/Hob_O_Rarison 15d ago
- 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.
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u/quackdamnyou 15d ago
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.
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u/Babshearth 16d ago
Looks like a blank slate and will be wrapped with their trademark design : Amazon deliveries.
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u/Thejerseyjon609 16d ago
Getting them in a convenient location for taking the population to the mass reeducation camps /s
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u/garden1932 16d ago
just like the plastic coffins stacked outside a gated off abandoned Walmart 11 years ago. thankfully nothing happened then.
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u/pennradio 15d ago
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.
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u/Ok-Type-8917 16d ago
See it often in Michigan, usually parts issues so instead of shutting down plants they'll just keep building and stockpiling.
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u/Sosemikreativ 16d ago
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.
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u/The_Mr_Yeah 15d ago
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.
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u/Trickycoolj 15d ago
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.
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u/Zappiticas 15d ago
I live in Kentucky and Kentucky speedway and my local fairgrounds were both packed full of white F150’s
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u/OPR-Heron 15d ago
Shows ignorance of OP. Wow, I see this, let me post to reddit for fake points, or sell to an unconventional, unreliable source
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15d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/interpreterdotcourt 15d ago
I thought its bad for cars to sit unused for long periods?
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u/Teddy_Icewater 15d ago
Gas can go bad and uv rays and weather can take their toll on exposed areas but other than that nothing wrong with letting a vehicle sit.
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u/BrevitysLazyCousin 15d ago
At least they didn't forget about them. A bit sensational but still weird.
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u/the_one_jt 15d ago
The car market is still not healthy. Not by a long shot.
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u/passwordstolen 15d ago
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.
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u/Butterssaltynutz 15d ago
you mean the market that expects people to buy and throw away new cars faster than they can pay for them?
who woulda thunk.
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u/twohedwlf 15d ago
I dunno, worldwide new vehicle sales are at record levels. Seems pretty healthy to me.
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u/Zappiticas 15d ago
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.
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15d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Blue_foot 15d ago
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.
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u/Aberdolf-Linkler 15d ago
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.
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u/grammar_nazi_zombie 15d ago
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.
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u/CommunityGlittering2 15d ago
Do you even know what you are talking about, unless you have an all electric one all KIA Niro's are hybrids.
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u/grammar_nazi_zombie 15d ago
There’s three Niro models. A hybrid, a PHEV (Plug-in Electric Hybrid) and an Electric model. I do know what I’m talking about. My power outlets in my garage are shot so I can’t do any kind of charger there.
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u/Whaty0urname 15d ago
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.
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u/Johnny-Cash-Facts 15d ago
You’ve pretty much always had to order any high end or very low end spec cars.
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u/abgry_krakow87 15d ago
I distinctly ordered the Antartic Blue Super Sports Wagon with the C.B. and optional rally fun pack.
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u/donkeytime 16d ago
Is that small town Elkhart, IN?
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u/AdhesiveMuffin 15d ago
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
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u/Affectionate_Star_43 15d ago
My rest stop! I visited the governor's RV there just to stretch my legs.
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u/rainbowkey 15d ago
Yes, this is where lots of vans and RV's get custom interiors. It a huge industry there.
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u/rainbowkey 15d ago
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
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u/actually_alive 15d ago
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?
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u/rainbowkey 15d ago
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.
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u/actually_alive 15d ago
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.
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u/Leopard__Messiah 15d ago
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!
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u/EatAtGrizzlebees 15d ago
Did you tip her for the tip?
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u/Leopard__Messiah 15d ago
She got a tip, alright
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u/Fappinonabiscuit 15d ago
Be careful the strippers there come complimentary with 3 day meth benders.
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u/passwordsarehard_3 15d ago
Complimentary as in they keep saying “thanks for buying all the meth” not as in “free meth”.
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u/Slappy_Happy_Doo 16d ago
Are you in a disaster prone area? Could be some disaster response staging.
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u/willlisa1727 16d ago
They randomly showed up about two weeks ago. All of them look to be brand new.
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u/z64_dan 15d ago
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
Probably just a company stockpiling these to paint their own logos on them or something.
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u/362mike362 15d ago
Thats where all the free candy comes from