[Keith Tedford]

Just a little history of the Oshawa truck plant for those who might be interested. When I started my apprenticeship in the fall of '65, the truck plant had just opened. The trucks had been built in the old uptown West Plant for many years before that. The up town bodyshop continued to build the cabs and boxes for another year and these were trucked by van to the new truck plant for final assembly. For the '67 production year, everything was done in the new plant. The old gate line bodyshop system was used up until 1986, when the plant was gutted and setup for AGVs and robots for the GMT400 truck. We had this plant up and running by January-Fabruary 1987 with saleable 1988 trucks coming off the line. There were a lot of upgrades to the equipment over the years since, with many bodyshop changes for the GMT800 truck, but the methods have stayed more or less the same. In 1993 they went to a third shift producing something like 1335 trucks a day. The old north and west plants are gone, including the power house and twin smoke stacks. The battery plant next door was torn down a couple of years ago. Now the truck plant. There's going to be a lot of green space in Oshawa before we are done.