| First 2007 Toyota Tundra Pickup Rolls Off The Line
Marking The Grand Opening of Toyota's New San Antonio Assembly Plant
The first all-new 2007 Toyota Tundra full-size pickup will roll off the assembly line at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Texas, Inc., or TMMTX, on Friday, November 17. The line-off of the new Tundra will mark the official grand opening of the $1.28-billion San Antonio plant. The plant will start with a one-shift operation, and add a second shift in the spring of 2007.
"The full-size pickup truck market is, by far, the single-largest opportunity for Toyota's future growth plans in the U.S.," said Don Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. "Thanks to this highly-efficient plant, the on-site suppliers and all the team members, we plan to take full advantage of that opportunity. The new Tundra will arrive in showrooms in February. Our production and sales goals are ambitious, yet realistic, and reflect our confidence in the product."
If the class-leading new 2007 Toyota Tundra is the largest, most sophisticated and most powerful half-ton pickup truck ever built, it's only fitting that the factory where it is first assembled is the most advanced that Toyota has yet built in the United States. TMMTX will be capable of producing approximately 200,000 new Tundras each year, with a crew of 2,000 team members working two shifts.
LOCATION
The TMMTX plant is located on the 2,000-acre site of the former Walsh-Small Ranch, said to be the oldest cattle ranch in Texas, one that was active even before Texas statehood. The site is just south of downtown San Antonio, Texas, in historic Bexar County. The location was chosen when key factors converged for Toyota's executives and planners, including truck market dynamics, geography, transportation resources, and community support.
Texas is the capital of full-size pickup sales in the United States. In fact, roughly one of every seven full-size pickups sold in the U.S. is sold in Texas. Geographically, the area south of San Antonio offered a large tract of flat, open ground required to build such a large facility. While the U.S. has an abundance of open lands, it is not easy to locate that large a parcel near major workforce and transportation resources.
An important component offered by the San Antonio site is access to the state's transportation facilities - both rail and highway. The plant requires two-way transportation, to bring in parts and materials and ship out finished Tundras.
To accomplish this, the plant is near two major Interstates, 10 (east/west) and 35 (north/south), which connect it to the nation's interstate highway system. It is also immediately adjacent to a pair of competing rail lines. This gave Toyota the opportunity to build connections to each of these lines, and to build loading docks so that multiple rail cars can be loaded at the same time.
TEAM MEMBERS
The second critical factor for choosing San Antonio as a site for the new Tundra plant was the availability of a large pool of qualified workers. San Antonio is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. and the second-largest in Texas. Toyota received more than 100,000 applications for the 2,000 high-paying manufacturing jobs.
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