General Motors Moraine Assembly
PRODUCTS
Chevrolet TrailBlazer
GMC Envoy
PAST PRODUCTS
Buick Rainier
Saab 9-7X
Isuzu Ascender
Oldsmobile Bravada
Chevrolet S-10
GMC S-15
PRODUCTION
2002: 325,436 vehicles
2003: 352,598
2004: 320,850
2005: 298,820
2006: 229,242
GROSS WAGES PAID
2004: $276.8 million
2005: $245.6 million
2006: $283.9 million
STATE AND LOCAL TAXES
2004: $20.1 million
2005: $15.8 million
2006: $17 million
MANUFACTURING SPACE
Body shop: 798,000 square feet
Paint shop: 800,000 square feet
General Assembly: 760,000 square feet
All buildings: 4.4 million square feet
Source: GM
“We should have seen this coming,” Heitmann said. “This is a story that has been 50 years in the works, going back to a reorganization of GM in 1958.”
But another longtime industrywatcher, David Sedgwick, editor of industry publication Automotive News, sees a far more immediate reason: Consumers simply stopped buying the GM-Moraine plant’s products — the Chevrolet TrailBlazer, GMC Envoy and Isuzu Ascender, among them.
“The real issue would be whether the products built there were selling or not,” he said. “That, to me, is 80 to 90 percent of the issue.”
On Tuesday, Dec. 23, the final vehicle will come off the assembly line at the plant between Ohio 741 and Kettering Boulevard. It will probably be a white GMC Envoy, workers have said. When the day’s sole shift ends, some 1,100 workers will walk out its gates for the last time.
In June, when GM announced that its Moraine plant would be among four North American facilities to be shuttered by 2010, a familiar litany of reasons was offered: A fast-weakening economy, fast-rising gas prices leading to fast-shifting consumer preferences for more economical vehicles.
Plant production numbers help tell the story. Fewer vehicles were being purchased and made.
Starting from 2003, total production started slipping at GM-Moraine: From 352,598 vehicles made in 2003 to 229,242 in 2006, the latest number available.
“The market for SUVs collapsed,” Sedgwick said. “What were they doing there? Trailblazers.”
“At the end of the day, it was bad luck that Moraine was producing SUVs instead of compacts,” said Jim Rubenstein, a Miami University geography professor who has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
If GM’s Lordstown, Ohio, plant had been producing SUVs instead of more economical Chevrolet Cobalts, it, too, would likely be closing, Rubenstein said. Instead, Lordstown is remaining open.
For a longer-term perspective on the plant’s end, Heitmann goes back to the 1950s.
Other industry-watchers agree that problems have been at work for decades.
“Moraine was signaled for closure before the bottom fell out,” Rubenstein said. “It predates the current emergency situation.”
In September 1958, GM named Frederic Donner its chief executive. Heitmann believes Donner’s promotion signaled a shift away from engineers and technically savvy leaders such as Alfred Sloan toward accountants.
“We saw the rise of the finance people,” Heitmann said.
Handing the corporate reins to accountants instead of engineers led to what Heitmann called "blurring of product lines" — placing Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobile models, for example — and to what some critics have said were poorly designed vehicles.
“It took a while for all of this to bear the bad fruit that it did,” Heitmann said.
Rubenstein sees other factors at work. Moraine began making GM trucks in the early 1980s when trucks and SUVs were becoming more popular. But the plant’s history goes back to 1951, when the current facility was built as a Frigidaire plant. The Moraine plant wasn’t always a GM facility, he noted.
“Moraine was always a bit of an anomaly because it was an adaptive reuse of the Frigidaire facility,” he said. Instead of building a plant with new machinery and equipment, GM adapted an older facility, he noted.
GM has received plenty of criticism in recent days, particularly as Rick Wagoner, GM’s CEO, approached Congress for a bridge loan to keep the company afloat.
Sharon Basel, a GM spokeswoman, said the “negativity” has taken a toll. Local workers have heard loud and clear what they regard as attacks.
“People have been doing nothing but slamming us and saying we’re getting what we deserve,” said GMMoraine hourly worker Kate Geiger. “And all we’ve ever done is come to work and do our jobs and go home. And we’ve tried to support other people and other unions.”
When GM first announced the closure in June, Wagoner said high gas prices, at that time about $4 a gallon, were driving consumers away from SUVs. A weak economy also played a supporting role in the drama.
“What’s happening is not any fault of the people here — either those on the floor, the union leadership or the management side of the business,” said Steve Brock, plant manager. “It’s just an unfortunate set of circumstances based on the current economy.”
Like GM’s decline in Dayton, the process of closing the Moraine plant will be gradual. With a facility as big as this one — all of the buildings cover more than 4 million square feet — it’s not a matter of simply locking doors and extinguishing lights.
“This is a big process,” Brock said. “It starts at the body shop, goes up through paint, comes down through GA (general assembly).”
GM’s absence will be felt acutely — in tax coffers, for instance. The plant saw gross wages paid in 2006 of $283.9 million, leading to state and local taxes paid of $17 million that year.
Josh Bright, a 27-year-old barber at Jack’s Barber Shop, 4726 S. Dixie Drive, recalls many of his classmates applying for jobs at the plant upon graduating from high school.
“They thought they were set for life,” Bright said. “Now it’s at an abrupt stop.”
Retiree Alfred Black, 78, didn’t work at the Moraine plant, but the New Carlisle resident worked for GM in Dayton from 1947 to 1986. Seeing the company’s current troubles — and hearing criticism directed against GM — is painful, he said.
Said Black, “It’s like somebody died.”
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