Tweet
Yesterday, our local Tbird Club took a trip to the Toyota Truck Manufacturing Plant just south of the city. It was an amazing look at how a computerized, robotic HUGE facility builds trucks! And it is FREE. If you are ever in San Antonio, I would suggest that you take the time to take the tour. It has to be scheduled in advance, so keep that in mind. At the moment, they are completely booked up through April. To set up a future tour, you can call their Visitor Center number at 210-263-4002. Presently, their website is down being worked on.
There was a big lobby effort to bring Toyota here. From then Gov. Perry, on down to San Antonio leaders. They had plenty of land available, and did everything they could to convince Toyota to move here. Luckily, for us, Toyota decided on San Antonio. They now employ some 7,000 people from our city now. About 3,000 on the production line, I think, and about 4,000 supplying parts from within the plant to the production line. They are presently working 2 10 hour shifts to keep up with the demand for their trucks around the world. This is the only plant that manufactures their Tacoma and Tundra trucks now, from what I understood. And Yes, Texans are big on pick up trucks, Fords, Chevy, GMC, Toyota, you name it. The Visitor Center is located in front of their manufacturing plant. We were told that every truck that is built is sold before they make them. They get their orders from their dealerships and then build the truck. They do not just pump out X number of trucks per shift so that they can set on dealers parking lots for you to look over.
They have the first truck made on display, also their millionth truck, as I recall, and now 2 million. It was a fascinating tour of their huge facility. It lies on sprawling fairly flat land south of San Antonio, and covers many, many acres and buildings. Tours are free, and well orchestrated. You ride in open trams, inside their facility, with ear pieces on to hear the tour guide. No one is allowed to get out of the vehicle for any reason while on the tour of the plant, which lasts about 40 minutes as I recall. All for safety reasons, because the tours have to stop for traffic from other trams or carts, going about the business of building the trucks..
They allow no cellphones, or camera's but I did find a video of a very short part of the tour that Toyota provides. It is fascinating to see this in person! Here is the video that I found online of what we saw before we went into the plant. In some of these videos you see the guests wearing hard hats. Apparently, they have done away with them now, as we did not have to wear hard hats.
There was a big lobby effort to bring Toyota here. From then Gov. Perry, on down to San Antonio leaders. They had plenty of land available, and did everything they could to convince Toyota to move here. Luckily, for us, Toyota decided on San Antonio. They now employ some 7,000 people from our city now. About 3,000 on the production line, I think, and about 4,000 supplying parts from within the plant to the production line. They are presently working 2 10 hour shifts to keep up with the demand for their trucks around the world. This is the only plant that manufactures their Tacoma and Tundra trucks now, from what I understood. And Yes, Texans are big on pick up trucks, Fords, Chevy, GMC, Toyota, you name it. The Visitor Center is located in front of their manufacturing plant. We were told that every truck that is built is sold before they make them. They get their orders from their dealerships and then build the truck. They do not just pump out X number of trucks per shift so that they can set on dealers parking lots for you to look over.
They have the first truck made on display, also their millionth truck, as I recall, and now 2 million. It was a fascinating tour of their huge facility. It lies on sprawling fairly flat land south of San Antonio, and covers many, many acres and buildings. Tours are free, and well orchestrated. You ride in open trams, inside their facility, with ear pieces on to hear the tour guide. No one is allowed to get out of the vehicle for any reason while on the tour of the plant, which lasts about 40 minutes as I recall. All for safety reasons, because the tours have to stop for traffic from other trams or carts, going about the business of building the trucks..
They allow no cellphones, or camera's but I did find a video of a very short part of the tour that Toyota provides. It is fascinating to see this in person! Here is the video that I found online of what we saw before we went into the plant. In some of these videos you see the guests wearing hard hats. Apparently, they have done away with them now, as we did not have to wear hard hats.
