Brent's timeline is quite reasonable.
Take it a step further: the engines followed that route. So did the gas tanks, all made at the Rouge Plant. So a gas tank stamped in January and an engine stamped in January (the date of the number stamped on the block is the day it passed run in testing) could end up in an assembly plant 2 months later because the transportation logistics introduced about the same delay between manufacture and assembly.
And, as Brent mentioned, Ford stockpiled parts. This was common manufacturing practice. They knew that the parts would all be used eventually, so why not? Once you built the plant and hired the workers to make them, you got the maximum value out of them both by running them "flat out", cranking out their respective parts. They did not consider having money tied up in inventory as a bad thing, like we do today; they viewed it as assets, like "money in the bank". Lack of a key part can shut down an entire line
, which has huge opportunity costs; better to be sure you never run out.
This is one reason that the Restoration Guidelines allow for the carry over of older features or parts or other items for up to TWO MONTHS after the Guidelines say it was replaced with a newer version on a passenger vehicle, for SIX MONTHS for parts on a AA commercial vehicle, and THREE MONTHS on engines (see "Judging the Model A", Restoration Guidelines & Judging Standards, pages 7 and 8). Note, it does not say you can install that new part on a car up to 2 months BEFORE the date it was introduced; no time machines in 1930!
Thinking about the logistics that were carried out at the time (without computers, etc.) amazes me. Lots of clerks tracking lots of shipments of lots of parts all over the world. Lots of paper! Not a lot of phone calls; lot's of telegrams, wires, telex's between offices and branches, suppliers and shippers.
Wow. This is fun stuff. Not only was the Model A an amazing machine, the organizational machine that Ford built to build it was amazing.
