Sales are off and production is down, so workers at the Toyota Tundra truck factory here are taking classes: how to handle tools safely, how to get along better with colleagues of varying backgrounds. Some have even cleaned local parks and fed the hungry while collecting Toyota paychecks.
“We’d rather be building trucks,” said Mike Goss, a Toyota spokesman. “I’m trying to imagine how many trucks we would be selling, with gas prices where they are now, if people were spending money.”
But people are not spending money these days, and sales of the Tundra and other Toyota vehicles have hit a wall. The sales slowdown, and some of the accompanying business problems, that have engulfed the Detroit automobile makers are rapidly spreading to the world’s strongest auto companies. To cope, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai are all slowing American production, and many foreign auto companies are putting off plant expansions.
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