Mother, daughter are rare team building Ford F-150 Lightning as plant expands

While the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning has made headlines around the world, few people know of the mother-daughter team inside the Rouge factory that builds the popular pickup truck — women who carry on a family tradition that reflects generations of hard work on the production floor.

“It’s important when you do have generations working at the plant that you set the example. That you be the worker you want your children to be, and they’ll follow,” Suzie Roksandich-McDermott, 53, of Taylor told the Detroit Free Press.

Her father worked at the old Ford steel plant. Her grandfather helped build the Rouge industrial complex in Dearborn. Now her daughter, Amanda McDermott, 32, of Romulus is on the production floor, too.

Suzie Roksandich-McDermott, seen here with her daughter Amanda, at a family pool party in 1992 in Homer, Michigan. The two women now build the Ford F-150 Lightning at the plant in Dearborn.

“You’ll see husbands and wives. There’s lots of sons at work, and even mothers and sons. But not a lot of them work in the same building. And I don’t know of any mothers and daughters,” Suzie said. “It was important for me that this is what she wanted. This is what I’ve always wanted.”

The mother and daughter are among 950 workers at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center who will do a final production push over the next month before a six-week summer shutdown to changeover plant logistics for a massive increase that will nearly double the production run rate of trucks to 150,000 vehicles annually. Where parking lots initially existed near the plant, that’s all gone now, eaten up by the massive building expansion.

Lightning began production in a 503,000 square-foot plant that’ll grow to 783,000 — bigger than 13 football fields, spokeswoman Kayla Brown told the Free Press.

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Not far away sits the Dearborn Truck Plant, which builds the bestselling Ford F-150 gasoline-powered pickup.

Suzie and Amanda used to work there together, too. These days, Suzie works in pre-delivery as an inspector on the Lightning assembly line. She focuses on quality review, checking for dents, dings, paint, anything that might be amiss on the new Lightning. She tests the electronics.