General Motors Co. announced today they will be investing $150 million at the Flint Truck Assembly to increase production of the new Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra heavy-duty pickups.
This new investment follows GM’s May announcement to expand full-size pickup production capacity in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
“We have tremendous opportunities to grow our heavy-duty pickup business, because we’ve invested in capability, performance, innovation and capacity,” said Mark Reuss, GM president, in a company statement. “Our all-new Chevrolet and GMC HD pickups are the toughest, strongest, most capable heavy-duty pickups we’ve ever brought to market, and our Flint team is up to the challenge to build world-class quality products to drive the growth.”
Specifically, the Flint expansion will go toward updating tools used during production.
“The new money will go to updating the conveyors and tooling in the assembly,” said Dan Foles, manager of news relations at GM. “We’re going to be able to build about 40,000 more pickups now, compared to what they used to do with the initial product to what they will do with the new money.”
In addition to the over $1.6 billion GM has invested at Flint since 2013, the company has also added 1,000 new jobs to Flint this year.
“Those jobs were largely filled by employees from the Detroit Hamtramck Plant and the Lordstown Plant,” said Foles. “There were more than 560 employees that came in from Detroit Hamtramck, more than 120 from the Lordstown plant and the other jobs were filled with workers from the Flint area who accepted a transfer.” There are several other GM plants in Flint.
GM’s plan to increase production of its full-size pickups began last year when the company launched the all-new Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 1500 light-duty crew cabs assembled at the Fort Wayne plant.
GM’s U.S. sales overall are slumping, but pickup truck and crossover sales are still strong. The automaker reported a 20% increase in combined sales of the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500 crew cab pickups in the first quarter of 2019 compared to last year and expect another large increase in the second quarter.