You can tell a lot about a Ford pickup truck if you know how to decode the letters and numbers--which Ford calls the truck's badge--mounted on the front fender panels. For instance, the F-250 is a 3/4-ton truck and the F-350 is a 1-ton vehicle. The base model of each is an XL. The XLT version offers some up-graded features, and the XLT Lariat is what car dealers typically refer to as fully loaded.
But how do you know that the correct badge has been placed on each truck? That's a question that assembly line workers at Ford's Louisville, KY, plant must ask themselves several Arial a day. Those workers assemble Ford's Heavy-Duty pickups--the F-250 through F-550. Recently, they have become more confident in their ability to match badges with vehicles, thanks to the installation of a vision-equipped robot that verifies that each truck has the correct badge before it leaves the final assembly area.