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GM to end medium-duty commercial truck line Friday

Thursday, July 30, 2009

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Matt Franklin
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FLINT (WJRT) -- (07/30/09)--General Motors Corp. will end its medium duty commercial truck business Friday.

The automaker will shut down the line at the Flint Truck Assembly plant for good.

The move impacts the lives of nearly 400 workers who produce the Chevy Kodiak and GMC TopKick.

GM says the economy left the automaker no choice by to stop production altogether.

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There were heavy hearts at the plant Thursday afternoon, the last full day of production. The final medium-duty truck will roll of the line at 9 a.m. Friday.

"I've been there since the beginning," said GM worker Richard Smith.

Smith has been at GM's Flint truck plant for 36 years. He was there when the medium-duty truck line started up back in 2002.

"We just had a really great group of people," he said.

And Smith will be the one driving the very last commercial truck off the production line Friday morning.

"Which is my honor," he said.

GM tried for four years to find a buyer for the line. And after talks broke down with Navistar and Isuzu, last month GM decided to bring the line to an end.

"It's not really obviously a celebration, but we do want to pay tribute to the folks that built it," said UAW Local 598 Chair Dana Rouse. "Because we did an outstanding job with that vehicle."

The line produced some of the most reliable vehicles on the road after Flint got the work seven years ago from a GM plant in Wisconsin.

"When we got it from Janesville, we built it with 40 percent less people. Doubled the quality rate on it," Rouse said.

There were more than 400 people working on the line.

UAW Local 598 says about 190 of those workers will be laid off.

In addition, 157 have retired and 140 will be transferred to the plant's largest line, the heavy-duty line which makes the Chevy Silverado.

Smith will go to the paint shop, but his thoughts still remain with those he leaves behind.

"There's people that are going to lose their jobs and that hurts," Smith said.

There will be a small internal ceremony Friday morning.

GM and UAW officials will be on hand thanking the workers for their years of service.