Chrysler assembly line workers!

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If you like to read about this stuff check out http://www.wwnboa.org/toc.htm
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St. Louis Assembly Plant Retired Employees Reunion.
Workers from Chrysler's St. Louis Assembly Plant talk about their experiences.

Stuff like this: Gary, being a maintenance man for several decades, had some very interesting points to add to the conversation. "What about in '69 when that guy rolled that one outside the plant-that was a sixpack car! One guy had a sixpack. One guy had a Hemi and they were drag racing and couldn't stop and one hit the material rack by the fence. He got cut up real bad and they took him in the plant and wrapped him up somehow and put coveralls on him. He went and did his shift and at the end of the day, they snuck him back out of the plant. They never did find out it was him. They don't know who it was today! If you were a well-liked guy, they'd cover up for you.


And this:Belvederes and Satellites were built at the St. Louis Plant for Richard Petty. This was from 1966 to 1968, before Richard went to Ford in 1969. We had heard a rumor that Petty had some station wagons built there also, so we asked James about this. He told us: "I was in charge of two or three of the cars that Richard had built. The cars were tagged for him in the metal shop. They were special because of the paint. They were complete, running, painted cars. I can't remember what engines were in them and we only put a front seat in. I don't remember any station wagons. If they made wagons, I didn't have anything to do with those.

And the last:pistol grip shifters walked out the door by the hundreds, several times with the 4-speed tranny still attached! We heard about one guy who was so slick at the crime, he could hide a pistol grip shifter under his armpit just by the clever way he held his arm. He'd hike the thing up there in place and then borrow someone's lunch box to open and show the guard at the gate. By holding the lunch box out, he could keep his arms pulled tight against his sides to hold the shifter there in the folds of his shirt or jacket. Ironic, isn't it, that they checked the lunch boxes but never saw the engines and shifters going out the door?!

Its a great read !
 
So what's a late 40s, early 50s truck cab doin behind that 59 car? That door and cab is nearly identical to my 49 and looks nothing like a late 50s.
 

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Quarts of beer and a dime bag for lunch......then off to an Obama speech! Lmao!
 
khaley71 said:
My grandfather worked at the Chrysler plant in Newark Delaware until he retired in the early 1980s. He start there in 1952 while they were still building tanks. I worked at the Newark plant too but much later, I was there until it closed.
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Very cool

khaley71 said:
One more pic
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Thanks for the 2 pics!

Loving the cool history and pics in this thread, thanks!
 
67redcudavert said:
In 70-71 I knew some people that worked at the Chrysler parts warehouse in Northlake, IL. From the sound of things there was a lot of pilfering going on there. There was also a high employee turnover rate, one of the guys I knew worked there 9 months and was number two on the seniority list. He moved into the shipping dept. and started sending stuff out of there by UPS. A bare hemi head weighs 69 lb. and UPS had a 75 lb. limit, he mailed out quite a few to people he knew.

As mentioned above, the forklift drivers were in on things. He would arrange with them to deliver certain part number items to the loading dock at a certain time and load them on a certain truck. The items were hemi shortblocks. He was selling them for $500 each.

Someone else I knew that worked there worked the night shift. He said that most of the night shift people spent most of their time looking up part numbers for desirable stuff, figuring out where it was and stealing it.

The first guy got caught eventually. There was a special order of two large batteries and they both got stolen. The plant manager was hopping mad about it. The guy selling the hemi stuff was building a hemi Dart racecar and wanted one of these batteries for it. He took one of them and put it in his Corvette on the floor on the passenger side of the car. The plant manager happened to walk by his car in the parking lot and saw it. So he got fired, but not prosecuted. Heard a lot of stories about stuff walking out of that place.
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Fascinating thread! :prayer: Absolutely love all the assembly line pics! Keep 'em coming and lets see more!

I grew up in North Tarrytown, NY which is now known as Sleepy Hollow, NY. We didn't have a Mopar plant but we did have a Chevy plant (yeah, I know :protest:) Anyway, in elementary school we would take field trips to the plant to watch them build cars. It was amazing to watch them build a car from a set of frame rails to a turn-key driver in about an hour or so. Never forget the experience even if it was at a Chevy plant.

Another thing that amazes me is the stories I'm reading on this thread about employee theft and corruption! It absolutey astounds me some of the stuff that I am reading. "Pallets of engines forklifted over the fence..." Are you kidding me? That has to be "urban legend" or something right? LOL!

A few years back I was reading a story about some big-time Mopar restorer and on this particular build it talked about how he used the last of his "lunch box parts". I was like "lunch box parts?" What the heck is that? Then the article went on to explain how some assembly line workers would "stash" small parts in their lunch box and take them home. Oh, okay, like when I worked for the airlines I would wind up with extra nuts, bolts and general hardware in my tool box. Okay, I get it, but pallets, PALLETS! of engines?! Holy crap! Unbelievable!
 
I worked at the trim plant till it closed my mom worked 39 years there.Only pic i can find of the place?
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So does anybody have an explanation how a late 40s truck is in that assembly line?
 
RustyRatRod said:
So does anybody have an explanation how a late 40s truck is in that assembly line?
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Some of those older bodies were still used on the newer models years for the "Heavy trucks"......they made Dodge big rigs in the early 70's that still used the 58-60 Dodge cab :glasses7:
 

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Yeah but that's clearly a light truck cab. It's the same size as the cars around it.

Oh and something else to think about. 1957 was the first year for the all new Power Giant trucks. They sure as hell weren't gonna use the older models when they were tryin to sell the new ones.
 
I suspect the MDT's used the light truck cabs. Ford and GM did...heck, Ford built 10-wheelers and even semi tractors that used the same cab as an F-100.
 
Jarlaxle said:
I suspect the MDT's used the light truck cabs. Ford and GM did...heck, Ford built 10-wheelers and even semi tractors that used the same cab as an F-100.
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Yeah maybe, but he Power Giant was a completely new model. Just doesn't make sense they would still use the old ones. Maybe they were tryin to get rid of them.
 
This may be a little off topic for this thread, but unlike today, didn't they concurrently run several different models through the same assembly line back in the day? So as a line worker you may be installing things on a string of Barracudas then the next time you turn around there is a Challenger there before you. Guess the line moved slow enough so that you could see what was coming next to make sure you grabbed the right part for it. Or did they sequence the different models somehow? Like running the different models on different days, or shifts? Curious as to how that worked out.
 
Maybe that cab was being rebuilt at the factory.
Didn't they yous to do that back in the day?
 
Didn't they use the Power wagon cab from the fouries allthe way up to early sixties?

Found a neat picture for Belvedere!
 

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I don't know. Here is a 60 Power Wagon.
 

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rp23g7 said:
We go on a cruise every year, last year I met a guy that worked for Chrysler from 1960 to 1990. I was telling me a story of a Hemi theft ring going on back in the mid 60s at Chrysler.

Any one else heard of this? Undocumented Hemi's may be out there somewhere
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I was talking to a guy in Warren Truck plant once who used to drive the trucks off the line to the parking lot. They would have him park some trucks off to the side. Then found out later that a truck was found "up north" with a VIN number of another vehicle. They were making "duplicate trucks", two trucks with the same VIN and sneaking them out. He never knew who was involved, he just did what they told him to do and didn't question it. It turned out that all of the trucks that he was told to park off to the side were duplicate VIN trucks. They were building two identical trucks with the same VIN. The second ones were then being smuggled out "under the radar".

There easily could have something similar going on with Hemis.

In the mid 90's they caught a conspiracy going on at Toledo Assembly plant where people would order Cherokees as base model car (Laredo), but they were built on the assembly line as fully loaded (Country Editions) and the window sticker only reflected the price and options for a base stripped down model. So they got fully loaded cars at base model pricing.
 
Maybe this will help yall understand what I am talkin about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_B_Series

The truck in that assembly line is a Dodge B series, just like mine. They were made from 48-53. PERIOD. Look at the way the door is made. It is clearly a B series. The Power Wagons that were used into the 60s had flat doors. WM series. That truck clearly is a B series because it has B series doors. It's an anomaly. It shouldn't be there. I wanna know why it was there.
 
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