What was it like to work on the auto assembly line

[19Fordy]

[B]I was wondering if there are any Fordbarners who worked on the assembly lines building cars during the 40's and 50's. If so, please tell what it was like.
I remember going on a college field trip in 1962 trough the Ford assembly plant in Mahwah, NJ and was amazed how those cars rolled off the line one after the other. I had never seen anything like that before.

[Charlie ny]

I did not work in an automobile assembly plant BUT I did work at the GM engine assembly
plant in Tonawanda New York........at the time THE largest engine plant in the world.
I started on the 327/307 engine line and finished up on the Corvair line. The work
was boring and I entered a zone each day to get thru a usual 9 or 10 hour shift.
Saturdays were a given........you worked. As the union steward admonished me......
this is the army mr jones, get your ass in here.
Regrets.......absolutely none. After a couple years I scored a tool makers apprenticship then moved to skilled trades foreman. I retired after 31 1/2 years and
used my GM experiences for great after retirement career.
Charlie ny

[V12Bill]

Classic Cars magazine does a column every month on the assembly lines. The title is I Was There and tells the story of a current reader who worked the line right out of high school and/or worked summers while going to college. Most report that it was very noisy and very hot. Most were vacation replacements, but some worked the line for several years before quitting and going to get an education and never returning to assembly line work again. Most stories are very interesting and describe a life altering change.

[PeterC]

Charlie- they did not let you get near the 396 and 427 big block line?

[flatheadfan]

Both my brother and I started working in production for Ford in the late 1950s. I remember my first day, I was assigned to the body shop as a lead grinder. I used a 15 pound grinder which didn't seem heavy at first but after 8 hours that grinder felt like it weighed 100 pounds. After work I got in my car to go home and was so physically exhausted I just sat there for 1/2 hour before I could sum up the energy to start the car. My brother worked on the final line assembly . As the body was lifted up to be dropped on the chassis the skids fell off. He had to pick up (along with another guy helping), the body skid for the right side and rack it. Weight 75 pounds. Production rate was one unit per minute; pay $1.68/per hour. I spent 10 years with Ford the last few years as a production supervisor.

Tom

[G.M.]

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I didn't work at the plants but I sold MIG welders to several plants and took the place
of the production workers a number of times. If I recall you welded at a speed of over
48 inches per minute. The arc was so hot if you went to slow it just burnt a slot you
put mail through. The conveyer stops and you step into your position and have if I
remember about 15 seconds, a bell rings and you step back and the conveyer moves.
As the workers get experienced output production is increased by slowly turning up
the conveyer speed. You don't try to touch up any misses, a guy at the end of line
does them. This was 50 years ago, I think robots do this now. G.M.

[petehoovie]

I worked at the Ford assembly plant as a teletype repairman. The entire line and assembly operation was coordinated by using teletype machines which were placed at strategic locations throughout the plant....

[5851a]

Lots of great assembly lines video's on You tube. I'm sure there is a lot of staged shots in the later ones but some of the early ones look pretty miserable. I'm betting they were happy to be working in a time of world wars, no social security, no ins etc. Some of the ones with engine machining and assembly are incredible. Here's one of many.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcXfk0op6JA

[19Fordy]

I appreciate the "telling the way it was" rather than a video. It conveys a reality
of the daily grind of very hard work.
Thanks for sharing, so far. Hope more folks chime in.

[mrtexas]

Henry didn't raise the daily pay to $5 in the 20s because of altruism. He did it to reduce quiting from the very hard work.

[Charlie ny]

To PeterC.........Pete as a matter of fact the Tonawanda plant was the sole supplier
of 348/409 'W' block motors and the legendary Mark IV. The first 'Marks' were 396
and 427's. Then the 396 morffed into the 402. The last version of the 'Mark' was the
502 Mark V for which GM purchased all new cylinder block and crank shaft machines.
Two of us 'up from the rank and file' guys were responsible for the installation and
operation of these new lines. 10 - 12 hours a day......19 days on 1 off. That was the
army mr jones.
As soon as I retired in 1993 I went back to tool making in a little job shop.....
go figure.
Charlie ny

[V8COOPMAN]

Originally Posted by Charlie ny

To PeterC.........Pete as a matter of fact the Tonawanda plant was the sole supplier
of 348/409 'W' block motors.
Charlie ny

Here's some of those "W" motors......freshly-made! DD

[325w]

33.2 yrs. at the local GM plant. No on the line all that time. But my last few years were. I didn't get bored with the assembly line. Lots of guys did hate the line but hung in till retirement. Sorry they went in upside down? round badges is from the 1954 first issued. The square ones are about 60 I think.

[19Fordy]

Keep'um coming.

[BoxCar Tom]

I worked at the Mahwah Ford assembly plant from mid May to Friday July 1st 1966. Drafted, in the US Army July 5th. During the 30 some odd days I worked there as a temp fill in I did a different job every day from installing glove box doors, door glass, ss buttons on station wagons, tail lights, emergency brake pedles, seat belts, door handles, side moldings, dome lights, it was non stop and hard to keep up. Some guys were doing the same job forever and could do it in their sleep. On my last day the outside temp was 107 and I was working 50 ft from the paint oven exit.

[jake197000]

once met a guy in his nineties that worked at a ford plant,i asked him if he ever met henry.he said once henry stopped at his station and said keep up the good work man.he said it was tough!

[mhsprecher]

I was a janitor at the old GM plant on Boxwood Road in Wilmington, Delaware in the summer of 1970. I knew a lot of guys who worked on the line from my high school days. It was all about production in those days. Quality? Not so much. The guys with all seniority got the janitorial jobs as it got them off the line. I was a summer vacation fill in, so I worked their jobs while they were on vacation. It was an eye-opening experience. One one stint, I cleaned up the lead grindings from the lead booth. Try and lift a dust pan of lead dust.

One of my fellow janitors was a guy who had worked in the lead booth and had a hole in the suit he wore to protect him from the lead. He got lead poisoning from that and was a janitor. He looked terrible and was very skinny, but he was still working, a reminder of the hazards of those jobs. I suspect that lead is no longer used in body work in the car plants.

I worked mostly in the body shop, where it was hot and noisy. It was amazing the difference in noise and heat when you went into "soft trim", which must have been interiors.

Morale was pretty poor, as I recall, but most people wanted to do a good job. They also were happy any time the line broke down, because it gave them a break.

[DavidG]

I once had a summer job on the line(s) at the GM Powerglide/metal stamping plant in Parma, Ohio. Two shifts of twelve hours each, plus ten on saturdays, and eight on sundays. No time to spend the money, so it was a perfect summer job for a student. I worked the second shift, so the heat was only awful. It was a valuable character-building experience and a important lesson in human relations.

[Jeff/Illinois]

Spent some time on the Main Line at Deere's Harvester Works. It was very boring and tedious. The work was tough until you built up the right muscles and then it was easier. They had me on a corn head sub assembly line for all of two days. I was so slow I was holding them up. Bad. The guy that trained me had been doing it for over twenty years. He made it look pretty simple but it was tough. I got moved to another sub assembly job and I was able to keep up on it.

Thankfully at that time I had very little seniority and got bounced around. A lot. Got reduced out and put in another job that I liked a lot

[19Fordy]

Gee, when I drove through Pontiac MI and saw where the Pontiac
plant was now a huge, leveled piece of ground, it was depressing.
Reminded me of all those worker foot prints left in the sands of time.