Thousands of Chevy Silverados Stuck at Oshawa Plant
Not all vehicle delays are directly tied to missing parts such as semi-conductors. Some can be attributed to logistics and transportation problems.
That’s precisely the case with General Motors at the freshly re-opened Oshawa Assembly Plant in Ontario. A Unifor representative, Jason Gale, says that around 11,000 Chevrolet Silverado HD pickups are currently parked outside the plant waiting to be shipped.
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Why? There’s just not enough trains to get them out of there.
“They were parking vehicles awaiting their modules or semiconductors to be installed and shipped out. Well, they’re at that point now where they are getting caught up, but there’s not enough rails to keep up,” Gale told Automotive News.
A small number of trucks are light-duty Silverado 1500 models, but the vast majority are heavy-duty 2500HD and 3500HD models. And those take up more space on train cars, which is not helping.
As announced back in January, Oshawa added a second shift barely two months after reopening in order to meet growing pickup demand in North America. The plant, which for now focuses on the Chevy brand, is about to start mass producing light-duty models, too. In fact, a third shift is expected to be added around August, increasing the workforce from 1,800 hourly workers to 2,600.
Things are worse over at Ford, which said on April 27 that approximately 53,000 vehicles are stockpiled at various plants across the U.S., mostly F-Series pickups as well as Bronco and Explorer SUVs.