Ford-built GMC

[Robbo]

Not really but they assembled some as in the picture below.

They also had another important wartime connection with GMC trucks - anyone know what it was.

[RANGER]

FORD and GM (Opel) controlled a majority of the automobile production in WWII Germany. Am I close?

[Robbo]

That's true but closer to home, the Ford Richmond plant (aka the Richmond Tank Depot) converted a lot of GMC trucks to air-borne configuration for the Pacific theatre of operations.

Some of the WW2 workers are still on the job :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLnghL8Gl60

[Bud Wheel]

Didn't "Divco" also convert some "air-portables" ?

B

[Robbo]

Found the reference again - note the hurry up and wait attitude - nothing changes - the year they refer to is 1944:

From Page 84:

http://www.rosietheriveter.org/nps/Ford ... pter4B.pdf

The Ford management and production workers at the Richmond branch were judicious in the expenditure of energy, and they were not willing to exhaust themselves needlessly. That attitude was demonstrated that same spring when the Richmond Tank Depot received word that the Army needed hundreds of 2-1/2 ton 6 x 6 trucks to be cut in half and then bolted back
together prior to shipment overseas. The purpose of the exercise was to prepare the trucks so that they could be shipped to an air field, unbolted, loaded into transport planes, flown to the battlefront, and then bolted back together for use in supplying troops. Each truck modified would be worth 1.7 contractual units. OCO-D told Richmond it would send modification kits for
the job, setting a deadline of April 15th. Trucks began arriving the first week in April, and crews began modifying a few trucks each day in the absence of kits or instructions. OCO-D pressured Richmond to get the rate up to 100 trucks per day. By authorizing overtime and instituting other emergency measures, the Tank Depot got its rate up to 50 trucks per day by April 20th. Even as OCO-D was urging greater output, Maj. Ball contacted the ports and found that there were no shipping orders for the trucks he was readying. Despite the pressure from above, he therefore maintained output at 50 truck per day, continuing to authorize overtime to meet that rate. The Richmond Tank Depot completed the order on May 10th, but then the crated trucks sat on the lot for more than a month, occupying valuable storage and work space. After the episode, Ball reported to his superiors that the experience had demoralized both the management and the unionat the Richmond plant.

[abn deuce]

a interesting note
Another accident had occurred the previous month that reflected a different sort of laxity
as the war drew to a close. On April 14th, two Ford workers took an amphibian jeep for an
unauthorized cruise in the bay while a group of the vehicles was being prepared for shipment.
Ordnance and Ford managers had received instructions not to test the amphibians because they
were not yet ready for travel in water, but the workers evidently had not heard or heeded the
instructions. The amphibian jeep sank about 100 feet from shore in 30 feet of water. One
worker swam to shore, but the other had to be rescued by some nearby Signal Corpsmen. The
depot had to hire a barge and diver to locate and retrieve the jeep.115

[abn deuce]

and another related to fuel gumming in stored vehicles
During the peak production in 1944, so many vehicles had arrived that the Richmond
Tank Depot filled the parking space available on the Ford property and secured a nearby island
from the Maritime Commission, where LTVs (landing vehicle tracked) could be parked. The
vehicles had to be driven through about 400 yards of water to get to the island for parking. In
October, Ordnance leased land at Lathrop, in the San Joaquin Valley south of Stockton, and
moved the vehicles there, because the rainy season was coming and the island, built of silt, was
expected to become too muddy to be serviceable. By the end of the war, Ordnance had leased
four separate parcels of land near the Ford property, including ground owned by the Parr-
Richmond Terminal Corporation and Filice & Perrelli Canning Company, to store vehicles for
104"Richmond Tank Depot, Vol. II, part 1, 1 October to 31 December 1944," 2, 10, 17;
"Richmond Tank Depot, Vol. V, 1 July to 3 September 1945," RG-156, Entry 646, box A601,
pp. 101-102.
105"Richmond Tank Depot, Vol. I, 1 January to 30 September 1944," 26-27.
HAER: Ford's Richmond Assembly Plant page 88
which there was insufficient space on the Ford lot.106 Some vehicles sat on the various lots so
long that in December Ordnance directed Ford to establish a program for inspecting vehicles'
fuel systems to determine whether they needed to be degummed. Enough vehicles were in need
of such remedial action that Ordnance authorized Ford inspect and degum pilot models of
fourteen distinct vehicles so that the contract could be modified to specify a price for inspecting
and removing gum from each kind of vehicle. Ordnance also began shipping vehicles from other
depots to Richmond for degumming.107