GM Expected to Stop Producing Light-Duty Pickup Trucks in Canada

General Motors (GM) will wind down production of light-duty pickup trucks at its Oshawa assembly plant, located in the Canadian province of Ontario, before the end of the year, leaving the manufacturing facility to produce only heavy-duty pickup trucks, which have much lower sales volumes.

This was revealed in a report by the analytics firm AutoForecast Solutions published by the AutoNews website, which has not been confirmed by the U.S. automaker, which simply stated that “there are no plans to reduce production volume at the Oshawa plant.”

It is worth noting that GM unveiled the fifth generation of the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 last week; production is set to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, tentatively at the same plants where the current version is produced—namely, Oshawa; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Silao, Guanajuato.

However, in the same response to AutoNews, the Detroit giant noted that the locations where the new pickup will be manufactured “have not yet been officially revealed.”

The report highlights that the Oshawa plant operated three production shifts from 2022 until early this year, when one of those shifts was eliminated, and that assigning it solely to the production of heavy-duty pickups would lead to the elimination of another shift.

In this regard, the Canadian union Unifor said it was aware of the report but that, so far, the company has treated the union with the same secrecy as it has the press.