Latest / In Wheel Time Podcast / Shaking Up the Auto Industry: The UAW Strike and Its Far-Reaching Impact

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Shaking Up the Auto Industry: The UAW Strike and Its Far-Reaching Impact · In Wheel Time Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another In Wheel Time Podcast, a 30 minute mini version of the In Wheel Time car show that airs live every Saturday morning 8 to 11am central From the Sugar Shack World headquarters.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: It's the In Wheel Time car talk show coming up.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: We hope to have Hannah Mishchenko with Zootoby With DUI information.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: We'll hopefully hear where Texas fits in that we can still do the story without her, but I'd like to have her with us.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Jeff has a segment on the top producing auto assembly plants in the US.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Conrad has the racing calendar and the car clinic and later we'll have a couple stories making automotive news headlines this week, outside of the big headline which is the UAW strike that started on Friday Just ahead here on the In Wheel Time car talk show, howdy, along with Mike out of this world on my phone, mars.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We always need more.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Jeff Zekin, king, conrad DeLong and you are Nobody, absolutely nobody.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I'm just here filling a spot, that's all.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I've elbowed my way in here and somehow somebody let me in.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: It's your garage.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: So we gotta let you talk, don's.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Garage?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's actually not a garage.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: No, it never has been.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: There's not a hole big enough to put a car through.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Nope, it's purpose built for studio.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: It is, yeah, a rehearsal studio.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Actually is what this was for a band, a rock band, a kid band?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, garage band, so to speak.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: At least that's what we used to call them back in my day.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: We're getting the band back together, yeah.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: We're putting the band back together.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: So the UAW strike, shall we talk about that?
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: As well, because our guest is not going to be able to join us.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: Why not Make something up Force?
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: Mature is what it says.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: What does that mean?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: It beats the heck out of me.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It's a word that I don't know how to pronounce and I don't really know the complete definition of it.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: So it started with the UAW demanding a 40% pay increase, and now they've settled for a 36% pay raise.
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: I thought it was down to 18.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no, no 36% pay raise and the automakers have countered with an 18 and a 20% pay raise.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Now let me ask you this If you go to your boss and you said I want a 36% raise and I demand it, otherwise I'm going to go on strike, you know what they'd say Get the road, Jack.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Well, and to a degree they are, because you know, you've got to remember.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: Now they are striking select plants at 4GM and still have to begin with.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: Now you know why they do that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Right, because all the other workers who are still paying their union dues, because they're paid, are funding the strike fund.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Because the employees, the union members who go out on strike, the union has some pay that they get gives those people money.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: So if they all strike at once, then the strike fund gets depleted.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: So now what they're doing is this selective strike.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Well, funny thing is, ford and GM are slowing down some plants and doing some layoffs at some plants as well, and that's going to I bet you impact the funding of the strike fund.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: So you know, mess with me, mess with you kind of thing is what I believe is going on.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: You know Ford's.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Huh, I see, I never thought that.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it makes sense.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: It is closing down and shutting down the Chicago, the Kansas City, the Kentucky truck plant and the Louisville plant as well.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: And then GM is shutting down the Fort Wayne truck plant due to trying to manage high inventories at the dealerships, Because right now if you want a white truck, that's all the dealerships have are white trucks.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Isn't it ironic that they're not the big three, the Detroit three, because you've got Lexus, Toyota, Honda that will just suck them up in all of their profits.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So good for them.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I hope they fire them all and none of them are UAW.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: You know the Toyota, the Subaru, the BMW, the Mercedes assembly.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: That goes on here in the United States.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: How about Tesla?
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: And Tesla is not UAW.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: So what GM is what they're doing, what the UAW is doing and I think it's a huge mistake on their part.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: They're going to force customers to go buy some of these other brands and once they do, they're never going to come back to GM, ford and Chrysler.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Once they, once they get a taste of the the other brands whether it's a style, design, quality and such- doubtful that they're going to come back.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: So you know the UAW is cutting their nose off despite their face.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: I understand some of their reasons to strike is they want a pay raise.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: If you look at it, the CEO pay went up 40 percent over the last couple of years.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: All three of them are making over $20 million a year.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: What does an auto worker make nowadays?
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: More than anybody else.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: And all of them make the same.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Doesn't matter if you push a broom or if you're measuring the piston size for cylinder.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: Whatever level of knowledge you have, they all make the same.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Which is that much.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: What is that?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: What other job category makes that money?
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: Nobody, nobody.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: But they're looking for the new pay raise that they're asking for.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: The average auto worker is gonna make $300,000 a year and they're also asking for a 32 hour work week.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I'll take $300,000 a year On a 32 hour work week versus 40.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: On a 32 hour work week.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: So it's a 40% increase in pay and a 20% reduction in work.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Well, sign me up as well.
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: How's that gonna translate to how much your car is gonna cost?
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: You know, and the funny thing, the other thing I look at it is you know they're complaining that the worker pay has only gone up by 6% over the last four years.
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Hey, uaw, you know who negotiated that contract.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Fain negotiated the contract for the last four years.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: It only gave you 6%.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: So now you've got this guy is trying to negotiate to a 40% pay raise.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: I think you are stepping in something that you're not gonna be able to shake off your shoe.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: My personal opinion, because they're gonna force people to go buy other vehicles and they're never gonna come back.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Have you ever been in a union.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: No, yes.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Bar says you're a sheep, you're just a sheep, that's how you are.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: And you know they talk about how much the CEOs are making that are running the corporations, and I do endlessly to the point of driving something you guys nuts, I'm gonna join a union.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: It's gonna be great.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: No, well, they got into it.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Let them suffer.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Nobody talks about how much Fain is making, because I think he's making over $3 million a year.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: And what does he do?
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: Not a damn thing Full-time union president, but like $3 million a year.
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: But the CEO pay is not.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: That's contracted, that's negotiated.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: The board is negotiating that.
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: It's not like a worker that works under a contract or even just a manager, that's working salary.
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: That's all contract negotiated.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: So the fact that somebody the board wants to pay him $20 million is irrelevant to what they're talking about because there's no connection to it.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: But the you, the you, the way that you, the board, could say we're not gonna pay, I mean we're not gonna pay the CEO anything for the next two years because we wanna save that money.
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: That would have no impact on the employees that are working under the contract.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I agree, but that is one of the points that the UAW continues to bring up.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: Every union does every time.
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: Our union always did that.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: We just thought, oh, they make so much money and they got so much land.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Well, that's the board and you know that's.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: There's nothing you can do about that.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: You can sit there and say, oh, we want our share.
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: Well, then you're gonna have to take the good with the bad.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: I even heard that on some commentators.
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: He just said Whenever?
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: The market falls and the company, like Ford's, lost what $3 billion working on EVs?
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: Well, you don't see any.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: They've lost $6 billion Well you don't see any UAW people taking a cut and paid to make up for that loss.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: You just said at the board the share that the shareholders are, the ones that vote them in and who are the shareholders.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Some of those shareholders are workers.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Now, if they're voting those people in, it's like anything else.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: They vote the board in and then the board turns around and then they go oh, look at the wall with me, because you're at your vote counts, and when you vote morons in ahead of you, you get morons leading you Just look at the federal government.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Whose fault is that?
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly, people that work for them.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: There you go, yeah, but if you're making 200,000 plus a year, you're not gonna want to get rid of anybody that's gonna start cutting your pay.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I was 18 years old in a union, working at a factory making 38 bucks an hour, and then you get all your bennies on top of that.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: 18 years old, back in the 70s Unheard of.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: And look at you now?
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still pretty, but it's ridiculous.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: He was even ridiculous back then.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: Now I didn't vote any of these people in, but I was expected to vote the way they wanted you to vote in a contract or with the union, but you're $38 an hour and you didn't want to vote them out because you didn't want to lose your $38.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: I don't think I ever voted.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: I don't think I ever voted in a union election.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: I'll bet you, you voted every time, you just didn't know it.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: No well that's true too.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't sign a ballot or submit a ballot, but yeah, someone probably did for the people that don't.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Well, they could put a serial number on every dollar bill.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: You'd think they could put a serial number on a ballot.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but no, I understand what you're saying, because whenever our union I got out of our union probably three or four years before I got promoted into a salary position for that very same reason that you know, they made our president, our local president, a full-time employee.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: So this guy no longer had to work.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: All he had to do was go to the union hall, sit around there and listen to people whining and complaining about stuff.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: And so I bailed.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, unions do some good stuff, but one of those people that think they've outlived their primary use I actually received a dues check after I left, moved to Texas and everything for a substantial amount of money, that they reimbursed me some of my dues, really yeah.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, good for you, but you can't not pay the dues.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: If you're a member of the union, you're salary.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they take it out of your shabber.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: If you're a nipper, yeah Right.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: You would have to be a member to work in the plant.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: It's not like Texas are right to work state Well that's true.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: You get to go.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: In fact, the pictures I got of the plants coming up, one of them was the Fort Street plant that my dad worked at, my brother and I worked at.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: It's in the middle of the shots, but I'll bring it up.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: And now Ford is also restarting four assembly plants in Mexico UAW.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: I don't think UAW is in Mexico.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: No, no, but maybe Abbott could send some buses to Detroit.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Car haulers bring the car haulers.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: We could have filled the car haulers, yeah there's a C-AW, there's a Canadian auto workers and UAW, which is American auto workers, United auto workers Well, yeah, but they represent the American employee, but I don't think there's a Mexican UAW.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: So the corporations are gonna play the game it's the Arriba you did and as the UAW is going to strike, the corporations are gonna look for ways to impact the strike fund.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Okay so, the UAW goes on strike.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: You got Salantes, ford, general Motors.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: What about all the vendors, all the suppliers, all of those folks that have a livelihood as well?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: They're not making the 44% increase.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: They're producing a widget that they use.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Now they're not getting any of that.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Now, some vendors are UAW, they're part of the union as well, but there's only a select few.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: There's only so many.
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: Well, and if there's no plants working to take those widgets that they're building then they're losing too.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's so important.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: They have no expectation.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: I mean obviously, if you go on strike you're not gonna get your money back, particularly at that hourly rate.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: You're not gonna 15, 20, 30% raise.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: It's gonna take you forever to get your money back.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: But those guys that supply the widgets to them that are losing, they're not gonna ever get a chance to catch it back.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Well, we talked about it last week is the peripheral people the guy that owns the bar across from the plant, the grocery store in the community, the manicurist by the way I have a pedicure today the manicurist that's in the community as well.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: They're all impacted.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: When these people go on strike and they're not working anymore, they're not spending any money, yep, so it's a big, huge impact on the economy, on top of the fact of the inflation rates we have.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: They talk about inflation's going down, but inflation compounds itself year after year.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: You know, last year it was 9%, well, this year it's 3%, but it's 3% on top of the 9%.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: They say that State of Michigan's consumer price index over the last two years is up 17%.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: You know, in the unions they're not keeping pace with their 6% contract that fame negotiated for them four years ago.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: So you know who's to blame that your contract isn't keeping up with the cost of living.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: So my brother worked at the Janesville Assembly Plant for General Motors that the actual plant itself started in 1919 as a tractor factory.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: General Motors bought the tractor factory.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Ultimately that tractor factory went belly up and GM started building cars and trucks there.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: And I was driven by it a couple of weeks ago when I visited up there what where it was?
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: They tore it down and donated all of the land to the city of Janesville.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: The problem is is that there is some ugly stuff that's in the dirt where that 1919, you know, you got a bucket of oil.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Just go out there and throw it out in the back.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So they've got a.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: If the city is ever gonna do anything with this massive piece of property of Janesville it's gotta get cleaned up, which will cost multiple millions of dollars.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: So GM said okay, well, we'll just tear it down and you can do whatever you want with it.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And there's a big, you know, fence around it now.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: But to your point about the ancillary support people that supply the assembly plant the bar and the grocery store.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there happens to be, and they drove me by this bar and the bar is still there.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know how it stays in business, but it's this little bitty rinky dink bar that's on the back end of the assembly plant.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: There's also a garage over there.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: You can see where all of these Certain things are placed.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the people that worked in these ancillary businesses that had nothing to do with the car industry other than serving the people that worked there, thousands of them, and over the decades you can imagine, probably millions of people that worked there at one point or another, because it was a very large, old assembly plant.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Being built in 1919, you can just imagine what it looked like.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: But it's a real shame to drive by something like that because, besides of what they made, it was a place where people made their living.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: It was influential on the entire cities?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, and so when I drove by the Belvedere assembly plant that Stalannis has it's mothballs right now on the side of the freeway between Chicago and Janesville, wisconsin, there's nothing there.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I took pictures of it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: You know huge parking lots where the actual employees parked.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Nothing, you know, I think they have one security guard there looking at the gate.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: That's about it.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: It's truly a sad thing when a factory like that shuts down, and I would imagine that you know.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Possibly more will.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because of this strike.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: You know, as the domestic market share falls, they don't have the need for as many assembly plants, which is what's driven some of the closures already.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I wanted to read this story.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: This is from Automotive News.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: The Detroit three who went on strike early Friday don't churn out the full size pickups and SUVs that generate the automakers biggest profits, nor do they build the engines or transmissions needed to keep other factories humming.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Instead, the UAW's unprecedented walk out against GM, ford and Stalannis targeted three assembly plants where a shutdown won't make too big of a dent in the bottom line, at least for now.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: The plants make Chevrolet's ninth biggest seller the Colorado midsize pickup, these number four utility vehicle and number three pickup, the Bronco and Ranger and the Jeep Wrangler, an SUV that dealers aren't expected to run out of for nearly three months.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: The plants Wentzville assembly in Missouri for GM, michigan assembly near Detroit for Ford, and Toledo assembly in Ohio for Stalantus employ about 13,000 hourly workers, or roughly 9% of the UAW's membership at the Detroit three.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: The strategy will have an immediate effect on vehicle production at those plants and on the suppliers that sell to them, but it is so far deals only.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: But so far it only deals a limited blow to the automakers overall us operations.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: That could change quickly, though, as the union is saving firepower to escalate the strike and ramp up pressure on the automakers if negotiations feel to reach a resolution soon.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: The UAW has a strike fund of $825 million and, at estimated costs of $8 million per week, a strike could last for more than a hundred weeks.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: According to Wells Fargo research published Friday, the three plants that went offline Friday accounted for an estimated 11% of the Detroit three light vehicle production in 2022, according to the report, some dealers were not immediately worried.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Texas dealer, houston dealer Stephen Wolf, who owns Healthman Dodge, chrysler, jeep, ram, fiat in Houston, said he'd expected the union to strike.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: The stoppage in Toledo would need to last around 45 to 60 days before Wrangler and Gladiator inventories become a problem at his store.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: So they're basing the strike on the amount of money they have in the bank, in the strike fund, yes, so if we run low on that the strike ends.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Well, not necessarily.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: They could run out of money and the people on the line, that's striking, they might not get a paycheck.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: That's happened in the past, absolutely.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: And the other thing that could happen is the federal government could fund it.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: You know they're talking about.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: The writer strike in California right now.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: The state of California is thinking about paying those people unemployment.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Well, I could, you know, I could easily see the federal government doing the same thing for these people out on strike.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: All right time to change directions here on the In-Wheel Time Talk Show.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the race card.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: You know racing season is beginning to wrap up.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Yep, wind it out.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Erica is currently qualified number one in pro stock in the current drag race With a 649, which is just tremendous time.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: She's the only one in the 640s.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: That's Maple Grove this weekend, nhra.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: You'll be able to see it on Fox broadcast and FS1.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Bristol night races tonight, which is always good.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Bristol being a short track, they'll be pushing each other around and no doubt tempers will flare.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Next weekend NASCAR will be at Texas and then December, or, excuse me, october 1st, it'll be at Talladega.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Formula one this weekend is in Singapore and then next weekend they're in Japan.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Imsa is at the Indianapolis road course, the old F1 course.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: So the Cadillac DPIs, the Corvette and stuff will all be at Indianapolis this weekend.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: And then a Fast ladies part 2, nascar Indy car finished, they had their Laguna seca and they're done for the season.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Must be nice, all right.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: By the way, the in-wheel time race card is sponsored by Texas nostalgia modified Production.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: You know we're talking about assembly plants a minute ago in the strike and everything, but when the assembly plants are up and running, jeff has a feature on the top producing assembly.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I've got the top six due to time.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: There's several others that you could go top 10, top 15, but I did this just because of that, because the lead in article and the gentleman from Ford and all that good stuff.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: So let's get this going.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: And the number six is a General Motors plant.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Now, none of these photos have anything to do with what we're talking about, so they're just random shots.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: General Motors plant Fort Wayne is a Roanoke Indiana plant.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: They produce 307 1454 cars.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Fort Wayne is the busiest General Motors plant in America.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: It is responsible for the company's two large pickup trucks, which would be the GMC Sierra and the Chevrolet Silverado.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: It is a 2.85 million square foot factory and it opened in 1986 you know how many square feet that is?
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: you can't stand at one end of the factory and see the other end.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: When you're inside and it's relatively automated.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of computer stuff.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Number five is Toyota, georgetown, kentucky 350,000 889 cars.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Toyota has long Manufactured many of its cars in America, including the top-selling Camry, the midsize.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: The Camry is assembled at the plants Toyota's Toyota plant at 7.5 million square foot plant in George yeah, it's the largest plant outside of the one in Japan.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Now that's the Fort Street plant.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: That's where my dad worked, that's where I work, that's my brother worked.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Is it still there?
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: It's no, it's level, that's gone.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: But this is the one that we're talking about now.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Number four is the Nissan North America in Smyrna, tennessee, 333,392 vehicles.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Smyrna is one of the oldest Foreign auto plants in the US, with the production starting back in June of 1983.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: It's also the second highest producing foreign-owned factory in the country, thanks in part to the Nissan Altima not UAW, not UAW Close that they produce all kinds of things the Pathfinder, the frontier, the Maxima and also the Nissan Altima.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: So those are the ones for that, for the Nissan plant.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Number three is Hyundai.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Hyundai Motor Manufacturing in Alabama, montgomery, alabama, 342,162 cars.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: They may be designed and engineered in South Korea, but they Hyundai, alantra and Sonata are both assembled in the US.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: The two million square foot factory was officially opened in May 2005.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: This was all built on a handshake.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Number two we talked about it and was Brian from Ford.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Ford Dearborn plant in Dearborn, michigan.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: 343,888 cars this is a Dodge picture, by the way.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: It opened in 2004.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: The Dearborn truck plant is home to America's best-selling vehicle, the Ford F1 series.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Last year they put together 323,415 copies of the F series and then 473 copies of the now defunct Lincoln Mark LT pickup.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: It's a 203 million square foot floor space for that particular plant.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Been there now.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Number one, and we talked about it earlier the Ford Kansas City assembly plant in Clay Como, missouri, not the Kansas City side, but the Missouri side.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: 460,338 vehicles.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Henry Ford, who pioneered the moving assembly line, would surely be proud to see Ford Motor Company factories on this list.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: If you go to the top ten Fords on there, three times General Motors, only on there once.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: It is a 4.7 million square foot plant.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: It also produces all of the Ford F series.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: That's the Rouge plant right there.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Look at that healthy thing there, boy.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you what.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Do you want to?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Go there and breathe that air.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you, at the time that I went there, it was a new plant it they had torn down the original Rouge River plant, which was the actual first plant that Henry put together right right there across from Windsor Ontario, and they made the frames, they cut the wood, they made the glass produce their own electricity.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah and and formed their own steel and everything.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: They did everything at the Rouge River assembly.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: And that's why the river was red, because they dumped all that waste into the river and all of the All of the property is still there, although there's a lot of it that's not used anymore, because you could just imagine all those other factories that supplied it the Rouge River factory, that, that, the, they just Took up a lot of space in this part of land.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: Well, and then in the Texas area we have Arlington assembly plant that builds GM sport utilities, and they're about to expand urban, yeah.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: And then the San Antonio plant for Toyota builds tundra's and Tacomas Yep.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: And then there's a tree plant in Shreveport, Louisiana as well, which is just across the Texas border and don't leave out the Tesla plant.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could do research, you could get to top 50, the top 20, whatever you're looking for in that category of what information you need.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I did six for time.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: So it's gonna have an impact on Texas as well.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: The strike is, they say, for every employee on strike there's six to ten ancillary people who are impacted by it.
• 26:22
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• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Right after this quick break, the original group of loopy tortilla restaurants will have you telling your family and friends just what the original recipes mean when it comes to the best Fajitas in southeast Texas.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Founder Stan Holt invite you to visit the original loopy tortilla near I 10 and highway 6.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Here's the original house that inspired the design of all the rest and the original charm that helped make loopy tortilla the go-to destination for Houston Tex-Mex.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Speaking of original, nothing can compete with the original lime pepper marinade that everyone will agree makes loopy tortilla award-winning beef Fajitas the best anywhere.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Loopy tortilla Katie is another location that gives you the same quality and service Houstonians have come to expect at loopies.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: It's located just off I 10 of the Grand Parkway.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: At Kingsland Boulevard in Katie, find yourself an Aggie land head to the loopy Tortilla College Station, located just around the corner from Kyle Field.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: It's a great place to enjoy those famous frozen margaritas before or after the game.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Headed east to Louisiana, stop in at the loopy tortilla in Beaumont.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: It twos on I 10.
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  Speaker 1: The original group of loopy tortilla restaurants invites you in for the best Tex-Mex.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Anywhere you own a car you love, well, why not let Gulf Coast Auto Shield protect it?
• 27:48
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• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Curb your wheels instead of buying new one.
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• 28:17
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• 29:44
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