Vintage picture thread

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by SKT

Post 1291

That's the back lot at Flint Assembly, circa 1979.

Those are repair vehicles waiting to go back inside for something (mechanical repair, paint repair, could be something major or something minor). Or they could be done and ready to be driven over to the shipping building.

The way they would mark where each truck needed to go next was with the "repair ticket", the stack of individual repair cardstock from when the vehicle went down the line. They would place the ticket strategically in some location - rolled up in the door handle, smashed in the vent glass, under the windshield wiper - and that would tell the drivers to take that vehicle to paint repair, or light repair, or heavy repair, or shipping, etc.

God forbid some student grab that repair ticket, look at it, and not put it back where it was!!

Every so often we would "lose" a vehicle on property. When it came time to ship it we wouldn't be able to find it. In extreme cases we would simply build another one just like it (different VIN) and ship that one to fulfill the vehicle order. Usually the "lost" vehicle would turn up somewhere at the end of the model year when the repair backlog was worked down to a more reasonable level.

K