Overview

In âÂÂMy Forty Years with FordâÂÂ, Charles Sorensen, sometimes known as âÂÂHenry Ford's manâÂÂ, sometimes as âÂÂCast-iron CharlieâÂÂ, tells his own story, and it is as challenging as it is historic. He emerges as a man who was not only one of the great production geniuses of the world but also a man who called the plays as he saw them. He was the only man who was able to stay with Ford for almost the full history of his empire, yet he never hesitated to go against Ford when he felt the interests of the company demanded it. When labor difficulties mounted and Edsel's fatal illness was upon him. Sorensen sided with Edsel against Henry Ford and Harry Bennett, and he insisted that Henry Ford II be brought in to direct the company despite the aging founder's determination that no one but he hold the presidential reins. First published in 1956, âÂÂMy Forty Years with FordâÂÂ, has now been reissued in paperback for the first time. The Ford story has often been discussed in print but has rarely been articulated by someone who was there. Here Sorensen provides an eyewitness account of the birth of the Model T, the early conflicts with the Dodge brothers, the revolutionary announcement of the five-dollar day, and Sorensen's development of the moving assembly line, a concept that changed our world. Although Sorensen conceived, designed, and built the giant Willow Run plant in nineteen months and then proceeded to turn out eight thousand giant bombers, his life's major work was to make possible the vision of Henry Ford and to postpone the personal misfortune with which it ended. âÂÂMy Forty Years with Fordâ is both a personal history of a business empire and a revelation that moves with excitement and the power of tragedy.

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9780814332795

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My story is about the Henry Ford I knew as well as any man alive or dead knew him. It is about the fabulous growth and preservation of the Ford Motor Company, which, in his shaken old age, not even its owner could destroy. It is about the creation and birth in that company of what has been the miracle of the Twentieth Century: the modern American industrial system of mass production with its moving assembly line. It is not the story of Charles Sorensen. It is, however, the story that I, Charles Sorensen, was privileged to see of Henry Ford and his works. It is a story of Mr. Ford's greatest success and his most tragic failure. - Charles E. Sorensen

My story is about the Henry Ford I knew as well as any man alive or dead knew him. It is about the fabulous growth and preservation of the Ford Motor Company, which, in his shaken old age, not even its owner could destroy. It is about the creation and birth in that company of what has been the miracle of the Twentieth Century: the modern American industrial system of mass production with its moving assembly line. It is not the story of Charles Sorensen. It is, however, the story that I, Charles Sorensen, was privileged to see of Henry Ford and his works. It is a story of Mr. Ford's greatest success and his most tragic failure. - Charles E. Sorensen

Author Information

Charles E. Sorensen (1881-1968) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and arrived in the United States in 1883. He attended school until the age of thirteen when he was apprenticed to a patternmaker in a Buffalo, New York, stove works. At seventeen, Sorensen moved to Detroit. He met Henry Ford in 1901 and began working as a patternmaker for Ford in 1905. Sorensen retired from Ford Motor Company in 1944.

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