St. Louis Truck Assembly was a

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded ...

factory that built GMC and

Chevrolet Chevrolet ( ), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941) and ou ...

trucks, GM "B" body passenger cars, and the 1954–1981

Corvette A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper (or " rated") warship. The warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the slo ...

models in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

. Opened in the 1920s as a Fisher body plant and Chevrolet chassis plant, it expanded facilities to manufacture trucks on a separate line. During World War II, the plant produced the

DUKW The DUKW (colloquially known as Duck) is a six-wheel-drive amphibious modification of the -ton CCKW trucks used by the U.S. military during World War II and the Korean War. Designed by a partnership under military auspices of Sparkman & Step ...

amphibious vehicle An amphibious vehicle (or simply amphibian), is a vehicle that is a means of transport viable on land as well as on or under water. Amphibious vehicles include amphibious Amphibious cycle, bicycles, Amphibious ATV, ATVs, Amphibious automobile, ca ...

s for the military. Another expansion was added for the Corvette line in 1953. On August 1, 1980, the Caprice/

Impala The impala or rooibok (''Aepyceros melampus'') is a medium-sized antelope found in eastern and southern Africa. The only extant member of the genus ''Aepyceros'' and tribe Aepycerotini, it was first described to European audiences by Ger ...

assembly line was closed and contributed to the plant's closing in 1986. During the 1981 model year, Corvette production ceased and was shifted to Bowling Green Assembly Plant in Kentucky Thereafter, it only built R- and V-series crew cab and cab/chassis trucks before that output was moved to GM's

Janesville Assembly Janesville Assembly Plant is a former automobile factory owned by General Motors located in Janesville, Wisconsin. Opened in 1919, it was the oldest operating GM plant when it was largely idled in December 2008, and ceased all remaining producti ...

. Automobile production and maintenance workers were transferred from the closed truck line to the new Wentzville Assembly in 1986 which produced Buick and Oldsmobile front wheel drive replacements for the old rear wheel drive B Body cars. At its peak, the plant had 35,000 employees producing 560 vehicles per day. A total of 6,3 million were produced at St. Louis Truck Assembly. The plant closed on August 7, 1986, although the plant essentially was doomed when on August 1, 1980, the Caprice/Impala assembly line was closed. As of 2022, the Union Seventy Center, a 161-acre industrial

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of citie ...

, stands where the former factory operated.Union Seventy Center
on Claycorp.com

References

General Motors factories Former motor vehicle assembly plants Motor vehicle assembly plants in Missouri Economy of St. Louis Buildings and structures in St. Louis 1920s establishments in Missouri {{auto-factory-stub