History
The factory was originally built to produce Samson tractors. These failed to find buyers, so GM switched it to producing Chevrolet automobiles in 1923. It has produced automobiles and pickup trucks over the years, but most recently built full-size SUVs.
Production at the factory was halted during the Great Depression for a short time and there was a famous sit-down strike in 1937. The Janesville Assembly also produced artillery during World War II.
The Janesville Assembly was until recently one of three plants producing the GMT900 trucks, such as the Chevrolet Suburban, and began building the next-generation short-wheelbase GMT900 trucks in January 2006. It began producing long wheelbase GMT900 trucks in March of that year and an overtime shift was added to meet demand.
From 1994 until 2009, the plant also produced medium-duty trucks for Isuzu under its partnership with GM.
The plant covers 4,800,000 ft³ (446,000 m³). It employed around 7,000 workers at its peak in 1970, but was down to about 1,200 when it was largely idled in December 2008, with only 57 employees left when it completely ceased production in April 2009.
Read more about this topic: Janesville Assembly
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)