Of all the people I’ve met and know in the auto industry, I’ve never met anybody that worked on the assembly line. Particularly the muscle car era. I think it would be interesting to hear some stories from them. I know it was just a job, but I’m sure they had some entertainment along the way. Anybody on HAMB every work on an auto assembly line ? Stories ?
I worked at the Freightliner plant in Portland for a year or so. I was one of the mechanics that corrected "off line"problems found in one of the 3 after-build inspections when the vehicle had been through the wind noise/water leak tests. Biggest fuckups I saw there was when an order of about 20 cabs had been drilled a foot off for cab mount holes. We had to weld up the holes and drill new ones, move the mount bracketry etc etc. Then we had a guy who would steal those nice Stewart Warner gauges off the line. At first he just chucked 'em in his lunch box but when they started checking lunch boxes, he bought a big-mouth thermos and he could get 4 of them in the thermos. Every day! He eventually got fired. Sorry, this is a close to assembly line stories for muscle cars I can get.
A guy told me back in the sixties on payday just outside the gate the mob guys had a table full of cash. and you cashed your paycheck there. and for the check cashing fee they took the odd cents. he also claimed that the mob owned all of the vending machines.
Never work on an assembly line but.....thanks to one of the workers who left his sandwich under the carpet in 1973, my brother bought in 1975 a 340, console shift automatic, black interior Plymouth Duster for 500$ ... It takes months to get rid of the smell....I am the one who discover the bag...
Find a copy of Al Drake's "The Big Little GTO Book". Has an interview with a gal name of Michelle Peters who worked several jobs at Pontiac during the early goat days ... she bought a new one in '64, & walked her '65 thru the line ... lunch hour was spent in the parking lot ...
I worked with a guy that told me a story about when he went to work for Ford in Detroit. He was trying to move up the ladder quickly, went to work every day, was busting his ass trying to look good, was basically making everyone else look lazy, and a few of the old timers cornered him in a back corner one day and told him it was in his best interest to start slacking off and stop trying to make others look bad. I asked him what he did and he said...I'm still around aren't I?
If you want a good read about working on the GM line during the 70's, RIVETHEAD is the book for you as written by an assembly line worker. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/18/books/balled-and-chained-to-general-motors.html Today it feels so sad to drive through Pontiac, MI and see where the Pontiac Plant used to be - just acres of a huge empty flat field of subterranean concrete where "the Goat" used to graze.
Sorry Latigo, didn't keep your BLACK sandwich....even today I still got shivers....remember: I am the one who get rid of that interior......and maybe my brother drink your Cola....LOL....
Never worked on an assembly line, but had the opportunity in 1964 to tour the GM Assembly Plant on Broening Hwy. in Baltimore as a Jr. High, Shop Class field trip. It was a fascinating day trip. They were building the GM intermediates there at the time. Got a chance to see two guys gluing the vinyl top on a brand new GTO and learned that day that they really did set aside the cars with the best sheet metal for Black paint. One thing that particularly sticks in my mind was in fact the paint operation. No robots then, only two Black gentlemen, without respirators, were standing on a metal grid walkway spraying the bodies as they came through the booth. Water was rushing under the metal walkway to suck the overspray down into what must have been the Patapsco River! Remember this was in the pre-EPA days.
Our little town of 2500 in northern Wisconsin had a Chevrolet/GM dealership. Late fifties the local jewelers wife's new Cadillac came in with an obnoxious rattle somewhere in the rear of the car. After taking seats out, pulling up carpet they finally took the rear door panel off. Empty glass beer bottle with a note rolled up inside; "Here's your Cadillac you rich ass bitch".
if you ever look at the old 40's videos where they are building cars I'd like to hear from the guys working the giant machines stamping out parts. so safety guards at all... bet there were a lot of guys named "lefty" by the time they retired.
There is an excellent book out there, the title I believe is "Ironhead", written by a fellow whose family including himself had worked the line in Flint. Lots of stories which might make you buy a Toyota. One I remember well told how when they worked in groups of five they had it figured out that four could do the job just as well so their plan which worked for a long time was each week one of the group would punch in a members timecard all week while he sat in the bar down the street whiling away the shift drinking and playing pool. Had a friend who ran a line in NY for GM and the stories he could tell like the thousands of Pontiac 6000s that wouldn't start and just got pushed into the lot until they came up with a solution or the space ship looking vans they made, every once in a while one would simply explode while the AC was being charged. They don't make them like they used to and sometimes that might be a good thing.
Had a fellow rodder that worked at Nash/ AMC Milwaukee back in 60/70's told stories about bottles, nuts, bolts put some where to cause rattles, started on welding line, did not know how to weld,(they needed welders, he told them he could weld) taught himself in a day on line. He also told stories about wheeling engines/transmissions out on hand trucks to parking lot to take home for selling or repairing Nash cars when he was at engine plant in Kenosha, 70's Some of his stories were sad, funny, hard to believe, but entertaining. I never worked in that type of situation and only met a few people that did. He also said the hookers would visit the parking lots day after payday and service many workers, That I believed as I knew 2 people that worked at Briggs&Stratton 70/80's and their parking lot was very active with coed coworkers and hookers I was told. At Harley Davidson Capitol Dr engine plant Milwaukee they were having an inventory problem, caught men throwing engines/parts over fence by freeway. Safety ? Advanced a long way ?, a next door neighbor in 70's was a foreman on stamping/forming line at AOSMITH, Milwaukee and joked when they went to the bar after work most of his men needed both hands to order 4 beers.
Old timer once told me about the first job he had at a Chevrolet plant. Seems pinstriping was an entry level job and he and another newbie worked together pinstriping the reveal lines on the body. Each painted one side as the car moved down the line. Anyway, one time a good looking gal that also worked on the line came by and he was chatting her up. He got got to the back of the car and found he & his partner had striped the car alright, but in two different colors !
Worked at the final assy plant for Volvo-Gm Heavy Truck for 15 years. Tig welding/ Robotics then finally Quality Control. During a slowdown period my seniority allowed me to keep my job and go onto an actual assy line. It about killed me..... I was installing brake air lines into a moving truck frame. Very little time allotment and no breaks. My hands were cut up terrible and my shoulders and neck were killing me working the hard plastic hose into position. No good memories from that experience but all the other positions there were very fulfilling and I learned so much it could never be replaced.
Worked at both Frigidaire and the S10 plant in Moraine City, Ohio.. Was a supervisor for 6 years after I got out of college, at Frigidaire.. Didn't like it so when the S10 plant opened I went back to hourly and was a mechanic in the executive car garage until retirement in 1999( good job)... Working in a factory is no picnic and I have many stories that I don't like to remember.. 32 years was enough and retired at 51 and never looked back.. I have been happily building hot rods in my garage for almost 20 years now and hopefully will build many more....
4wdl: That book was RIVETHEAD. Focused on the Flint plant where they built suburbans. The author riveted in the front cross members along with figuring out how to beat the time clock.
Well I worked on the assembly line at the Arlington GM plant. 1964-95. Their are some good stories and some bad. Their were some fine men there and some jerks. It was a good job and I made a very good living. The statue of limitations may not have run out yet on the stories yet !!!!!!!
We have to be careful. Discussing unethical practices about existing companies can be catastrophic. This is an open public forum. Not a garage full of guys drinking beer. I could fill the pages here.
Factory work must have been different back then, some of the stories remind me a little of those I heard about John Deere and Rath Packing. During World War II I'm told guys would punch in at one factory and go work at the other. Nice work if you can get it. Theft at the packing plant was bad, folks would throw hams and bacon and chops on top of the railcars or throw them off the train to their waiting buddies at certain locations. In the old factory layout there were lots of places to hide, and useless workers figured out how to game the system for years.
I retired from the GM Electro-Motive locomotive plant after 35 years and one of the funniest stories I ever heard there was this- The plant was huge and with so many employees the lunch breaks were staggered. A young lady from the exhaust valve department, while on her lunch period, was servicing a crane operator in his overhead trolley crane cab when she was seen by a supervisor. She was written up by her supervisor but the UAW beat the reprimand by arguing that she was on her lunch break and could eat anything she wanted.
http://cdm15889.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15889coll2 Ford commisssioned oral histories from a bunch of folks who worked there..to hear the stuff in their own words is interesting..
Maybe that's what happened with my Dad's off topic era 72' vehicle. One Saturday after after washing his car some one and half year's after buying it. He noticed that the passenger side window's on the front and back door didn't have garnish molding but the driver's side did.
Funny you would mention that....... In the mid 80's, and pulling apart a 63 nova 'vert, low and behold a coke can in the pass rear door panel. It had never been apart.... =stocker. Had the can for years as a trophy, but it somehow got lost over time.
I worked in a few dealerships over the years and the bottle or can down behind a panel seemed to be a rather common thing to find when hunting a rattle. One of the guys I worked with at the dealeship in Waco had a new Pontiac come in for a rattle in the passenger door, drove it down his check for rattles section of street near the shop and it rattled. Pulled the door panel off and inside was a nearly new 1/2 inch impact wrench. Looked around to make sure everything was ok and buttoned it up and gave it back to the customer. Wrench stayed in his tool box. Had a new 74 Pontiac Ventura come in that had all Nova trim on the dash straight off the convoy truck.
In 1974, I worked in a machine shop in Tonawanda, NY. A guy came in wanting his 454 built in his Chevelle, only if he could supply the parts. I started a conversation with him and he confessed that he was a supervisor on the Tonawanda engine plant and could get most of the parts we would need. He had worked in almost every position in the plant and had a LOT of stories to tell about the plant and some very unusual events. The best one was about the COPO 427 engines and why they only built a few of them. The other story was involving his front crankshaft seal, they have a machine that measures the roundness of the seal, well it took 8 seals to find one that was close to round. Oh, the 427 story.........an accident on the dock with a forklift and a 50 engine pallet resulted in the engines ending up in the Niagara river. Dunking them in the nasty river water was probably worst then dunking them in the ocean. They could only use them for parts. Engines with extra parts........Friday engines, during the air test on Monday there was no compression in one cylinder because there was no intake valve...... I also worked in a few dealerships and some of the sh*t that came out of the factory was scary..... And of course all the stories of the Vega...... 2X^ Had a Buick Skylark come off the truck with Oldsmobile emblems on one side....... Had a Chevette one time that could not back off the delivery truck....sprag was put in backwards...
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