Trucker protests on US-Canada border couldn’t come at worse time for automakers, car buyers
DETROIT – Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor North America continue to see production disruptions at various factories caused by the trucker protest at the Ambassador Bridge.
But General Motors and Stellantis were running plants on normal operations as of early afternoon Friday. Though both were monitoring the situation after experiencing some production stoppages earlier in the week.
The auto industry struggled to get parts over the U.S.-Canada border as the protest by truck drivers at the bridge entered its fifth day.
The difficulty couldn’t come at a worse time for carmakers and car buyers.
“The blockade comes at a terrible time as the auto industry already has been shutting down plants due to the chip shortage. This exacerbates the situation,” said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Cox Automotive. “For consumers, this will cause continued shortages in inventory, continued high prices as a result and long delays in getting a vehicle, perhaps that they ordered.”
Possible relief?
A scheduled hearing to ask the Ontario Superior Court chief judge to order an end to the weeklong protest Friday prompted demonstrators to begin moving trucks to open a single lane on the Ambassador Bridge before noon. The bridge remained closed to all traffic, however.
Friday evening, a judge granted an injunction allowing police to forcibly remove the demonstrators, but the bridge remained blocked.
The drivers oppose a vaccine mandate to enter Canada, among other things. The protest blockade is shutting down all traffic on the bridge and backing it up on Michigan’s other border crossing, the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron.
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The Ambassador Bridge is a major international gateway where about $356 million in goods travel between Detroit and Windsor every day, according to Politico.
For 2021, Edmunds estimates 7.3% of U.S. vehicle sales resulted from Canadian-built vehicles. It is also a key link for the automotive industry to ship parts to factories.
Ford and Toyota
Ford continued to be hit hard by the bridge protest activity earlier Friday.
The automaker said its Ohio Assembly Plant is down due to a parts shortage related to the bridge blockade. The Ohio Assembly Plant builds Super Duty Chassis cabs, medium-duty trucks and E-series vans.
Ford’s plant in Oakville, Ontario, and its Windsor engine plant continue to work at “reduced capacity” due to the bridge blockade for a second day in a row, Kelli Felker, Ford global manufacturing and labor communications manager, told the Detroit Free Press on Friday.
Ford makes its Ford Edge and Lincoln Nautilus SUVs at the Oakville plant. It makes two engines at its Windsor plant: One goes into the F-150 pickup and Mustang muscle car. The other goes into the Super Duty pickup and Econoline van, Felker said.
THE TRUCKER PROTEST AND CAR PARTS: Automakers work to bypass trucker protest at Ambassador Bridge as plants cancel shifts
All of Ford’s North American plants will run the week of Feb. 14, except Ohio Assembly Plant and Kansas City Assembly Transit production, Felker said.
She said some plants will operate with fewer shifts while still building vehicles. They include the Kentucky Truck and Chicago Assembly plants, both of which will operate on two crews, and Dearborn Truck, which will run on one crew. Each of those plants normally runs three crews.
“This interruption on the Detroit-Windsor bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities and companies on both sides of the border that are already two years into parts shortages resulting from the global semiconductor issue, COVID and more,” Felker said. “We hope this situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread impact on all automakers in the U.S. and Canada.”
At Toyota Motor North America, four factories have been affected by the protest, said Toyota spokesperson Kelly Stefanich.
“Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia have recently been impacted by issues related to the Ambassador Bridge blockade,” Stefanich said, without providing specific detail on the production disruption at those plants.
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But Stefanich said the company expects more disruption through the weekend, and it will “continue to make adjustments as needed. While the situation is fluid and changes frequently, we do not anticipate any impact to employment at this time.”
Toyota has been hit with a number of supply chain, weather- and COVID-19-related challenges that have affected production at its North American plants, Stefanich said.
“Our teams are closely monitoring the situation and working diligently to minimize the impact on production,” Stefanich said.
GM and Stellantis
Most of GM’s U.S. assembly plants were running scheduled production Friday, said GM spokesman Dan Flores.
By Friday evening, Flores declined to comment on the injunction saying, “Our focus remains working with our suppliers on mitigating any issues they have. Obviously, the situation remains fluid, the focus is to keep the parts flowing to our assembly plants to keep production going.”
That includes its Fort Wayne Assembly in Indiana, where GM builds its full-size light-duty Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups. On Thursday, GM flew parts from Canada to Fort Wayne to keep the plant running. The plant was down for some time late Thursday. It resumed regular production Friday morning.
At GM’s Bowling Green Assembly plant in Kentucky, production of the Corvette continued uninterrupted. A plant leader said the plant has enough parts in inventory to get through Monday.
Flores, however, said that GM’s CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, where it makes the Chevrolet Equinox SUV, had to cut the first shift short Friday.
At Michigan’s Flint Assembly, where GM builds its heavy-duty versions of the pickups, Friday’s first shift also was cut short, due to lack of parts because of the blockade. Flint resumed regular production on its second and third shifts. GM shortened a shift there Thursday due to a lack of parts.
On Friday, a worker at Flint told The Free Press, “One manager said we’ll run all day. Another said that we might run out of parts.” The worker asked to not be named because the worker is not authorized to speak to the media.
At GM’s Arlington Assembly plant in Texas where it makes its fat-profit full-size SUVs, all three shifts were running on Friday after the plant experienced several periods of production disruptions last week due to parts shortages and weather-related issues, said a plant worker and verified by communication between plant leaders and workers obtained by the Free Press.
Stellantis North America plants all started Friday morning, but “this remains an incredibly fluid situation,” said spokesperson Jodi Tinson. “We continue to work closely with our carriers to get parts into the plants to mitigate further disruptions.”
On Thursday, Stellantis had to cut the first shift off early at Windsor Assembly plant, where it builds the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, due to the parts shortage. Windsor Assembly Plant has been one of the Stellantis plants that has been most affected by the ongoing global chip shortage as well. It faced considerable downtime over the past year as the automaker prioritized the production of its most profitable trucks and SUVs.
Toledo North Assembly Complex also cut short its first shift Thursday. Toledo is where the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator are built.
Free Press staff writers Phoebe Wall Howard and Eric D. Lawrence contributed to this report.
Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trucker protest disrupts production at Ford, Toyota plants
