"To pare down inventory"
Interesting......... not selling as well as they'd like?
"GM also makes large trucks in Arlington, Texas, and Silao, Mexico. Those plants will continue to operate"
2 points -
Point 1 - I didn't know that GMC made large trucks ie. bigger than 3500
Point 2 - Why would they close American plants and not "foreign" plants?
You'd think 60 billion of USA taxpayers money would give priority to American workers.
Is that a USA Government immigration strategy?
Keep them employed in Mexico so they don't sneek across the border.

Lou: read the article!, thay are just closing to set up for the next year, just in time for the holiday, and summertime fun, don't turn this into bad news, cause it's not.

@ Lou
my thoughts exactly

HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!

Silao, Mexico, made in U.S.A. right on!

GM imports 1/3 of what they sell here in the U.S. yet the U.S. plants are the ones closing, hmmmmm...

I can see future mis-management that led to the welfare handout down the road. If nobody was held accountable for those failures before, what makes you think GM leadership will learn their lessons?

They will not learn and have the taxpayers as their safety net because they are "too big to fail" cr/p...

They need to remain private sector period and if they fail, so be it! That is capatalism!

@Lou- It's called summer shut-down. Combined with the Christmas-newyear shut-down, it affords the opportunity to get in to make model-year change-over and just generally catch up maintenance projects. The fact that the Silao plant is staying open could mean as little as that they'll do the change-ove at another time, or that the particular product from there has lower inventory.

Does everything have to be turned into an argument or twisted into something its not? I mean i dont like GM in the least bit but i just find it ridiculous how every article that gets posted on here gets manipulated and twisted into something completely false or way off topic, and it gets really annoying and childish after awhile.

GM may be up to something... might have to read between the lines.

Meanwhile both RAM and F Series keep producing and selling!

As much as Id love to slam GM here it really doesnt seem like bad new for GM minus the part about which plants to close for a bit but just the fact that they are closing plants just to get ready for the next year and it falls on a holiday week isnt the end of the world or GM saying omg were not selling em stop making em relax everyone

by the looks of our local gm dealers this is actually overdue. We have two chevy and one gmc dealer in our area and both chevy dealers have more vehicles now than i have seen in a long time. The one has about 15 dark gray ones, which might mean they are trying to use up that color before 2012. If they want to get rid of all the 2011's they will eventually have to do discounting just like everyone else doues at the end of the model year.

Lou,
Remember when GM said this?

GM Increasing Jobs, Production to Meet Demand for Heavy Duty Pickup Trucks

"General Motors plans to add a third shift at its heavy-duty truck plant in Flint, Mich., to meet increased demand...

"The first wave of employees is expected to arrive at Flint Assembly in the second quarter with more waves arriving until the plant starts the third shift in the third quarter..."

http://news.pickuptrucks.com/2011/01/gm-increasing-jobs-production-to-meet-demand-for-heavy-duty-pickup-trucks.html

The third quarter starts next month, and now "GM will idle pickup truck plants in Michigan and Indiana for two weeks next month to pare down inventory."

@Lou & Dave

GM increased production due to increased demand. Now GM needs to pare down because the new model is coming. This is normal and doesn't mean GM trucks are not selling!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Lou

Bloomberg News:

GM’s Flint assembly in Michigan will shut down for the weeks of July 4 and July 11, said Tom Wickham, a spokesman for the Detroit-based automaker. Production at the Fort Wayne Assembly Plant in southwest Allen County also will stop during those weeks, said Orval Plumlee, president of United Auto Workers Local 2209, which represents hourly workers among the factory’s more than 3,300 employees.

The two plants make Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups. GM’s truck inventory was 288,000 units at the end of May, up from 275,000 on April 30. The inventory included 258,000 units of large trucks, or 110 days' supply, Don Johnson, GM’s vice president of U.S. sales, said on a June 1 conference call. The industry standard is about 60 days' supply.

“GM is rightly being quite careful about building products into the summer months and not getting caught with an excess amount of prior model year inventories,” said Michael Robinet, an analyst at IHS Automotive in Northville, Mich. “They’re going to be careful not to build too much of the older model year vehicles and have to discount them heavily in the face of having newer model year vehicles on the same lot.”

Mark Reuss, president of GM’s North American operations, said at a June 3 conference that the inventory of trucks was acceptable in the short term and wouldn’t prompt a surge in discounts.

“We’re not going to run big incentives to clear inventory,” Reuss said on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan earlier this month. “We’ll adjust inventory on a production basis.”

GM also makes large trucks in Arlington, Texas, and Silao, Mexico. Those plants will continue normal production while Flint and Fort Wayne are down, Chris Lee, a GM spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

The company’s deliveries in May fell 1.2 percent to 221,192 vehicles, the Detroit-based company said in a June 1 statement. While Johnson said GM is “not anticipating tremendous growth” in the U.S. truck segment, sales may rebound in the second half due to seasonal factors and pent-up demand.

http://www.kpcnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9259:GM-will-idle-Fort-Wayne,-Michigan-plants-to-retool,-reduce-truck-supply&catid=179:latest&Itemid=43

I wonder if the plant in Mexico makes trucks exclusively
For the U.S. or are some of the trucks are for the Mexican
and south American markets? I got no problem with
a GM plant in Mexico making cars and trucks for mexicans.

do you think gm 2012 is the new model..... smart move to slow production..y thing ford dont care to get big profit on is truck they just want the sale numbers year end..watch oct ford fire sale..

This is normal. Everyone has their summer shutdown usually over the 4th to retool and gear up for the next year. The things thats kind of a snag here is the large number of days' supply. Granted its not a bad thing, but i really don't think GM needs to have 2 separate truck lines. Chevrolet and GMC should have been merged as a part of GM's restructuring plan, or GMC could have been the truck division with Chevrolet handling cars and SUV's not unlike Chrysler's move splitting Dodge car from Ram truck. I still stand by that as being a marketing move, being able to sell trucks in a truck market and cars in a car market without having the other where it unnecessarily be placed.

I don't think this is significant of GM's truck sales slowing, rather too much production for the volume thats selling.

If it is normal to shut down to retool for the 2012 models,

why issue a press release?

Why say inventories are too large?

Why would GMC need to retool?
The 2012's aren't any different from the 2011's.

Why hasn't Dodge, Toyota, or Ford issue a press release saying they have to shut down to retool for 2012?

I find that odd.

Why is the Mexican plant not being shut down?

I find that odd.

If you think I am bashing, I'm not surprised.

That is the only thing about this story that I do not find odd.

@ Lou

I think they issued the press release because of the inventory surplus. I dont think your bashing any more than i'm bashing, but i do agree that it is sort of odd how they are only idling the american plants and not the mexican one. Might have something to do with the UAW contracts? But then again that goes back to the gearing up for 2012, very little is changing unless they do an equipment rotation, as in they idle 2 plants one summer to repair and replace worn out machinery, then idle 2 more the next summer to do the same, and so on. But the inventory surplus thing begs the question: Does GM truly need to have 2 completely separate truck divisions? They're only competeing with themselves!

@Lou,

I get where you are coming from. I find this laughable at best.

Can any body tell me what the is the difference between Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra light and heavy-duty pickups, and GMC large trucks?

THe last line said "GM also makes large trucks in Arlington, Texas, and Silao, Mexico."

Is that a military contract? or non - USA market trucks?

I didn't know GM had any large trucks now unless its military related. As far as the pickups, GM and Chevy are the same truck although the Chevy had a box front end where the GMC is more curved and don't look like a box on wheels. Pretty much everything in the cab and under the hood is the same.

@David w,

Those GM pickups made in Mexico are imported into the U.S.

GM is after cheap labor costs and GM is practically one of the largest importers into the U.S.

This sort of thing is common for many manufactures, not just the auto industry and those posting conspiracy theories are just making themselves look childish and febil minded.

"Why hasn't Dodge, Toyota, or Ford issue a press release saying they have to shut down to retool for 2012?"

Ever heard of the TPS Toyota Production System? Toyota has some of their main and larger equipement on wheels or rails for easy re-tooling...

Now Toyota has to play the inventory/sales game likewise but in a normal year of sales/operations the traditional 1 or 2 week shutdown by the big 3 does not happen with Toyota because of TPS and much faster re-tooling for a new model.

Toyota is still a benchmark when it comes to the manufacturing process that everybody else has either copied or is trying to implement.