Toyota to replace all motors in '22-'23 Tundras

[dixiehack]

Yeah Hueytown borders Bessemer to the north-northeast. (Nothing really exists on a neat grid in most of west Jefferson County.)

The best route to solid blue-collar wages in that chunk of the world now is to commute halfway down to Tuscaloosa and work at the Mercedes plant, or failing that maybe one of the coal mines nearby. The next notch down is the Amazon distribution hub. And from there it's mostly retail, fast food or freelance pharmaceutical sales.

Of the top three options mentioned above, two of them famously held off union votes recently and the miners at Jim Walters Resources just lost a long, hard strike a few months back. But surely voting red strictly along racial lines one more time will fix everything.

 

[Driftwood]

Davey Allison buried not far from that plant, if I recall correctly. Hueytown was hurt badly by the loss of the steel industry and the eventual breakup of the Alabama Gang.

Well, let's be honest. A inexperienced helicopter pilot and a chainlink fence really broke it up.

 

[FileNotFound]

This is what I know about the Alabama economy in the '80s.

 

[Hermes]

Haskell & Barker in Indiana produced (and merged with) Pullman cars for decades until the 1970s. The yards then became an outlet shopping mall, which always seemed like a good microcosm for the American economy to me.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Made in Bessemer, Ala., a straight shot down the road from the US Steel plants at Fairfield and Ensley. When it was sold off in 81 and the workforce slashed to a fraction, Bessemer went into a tailspin it has yet to recover from. The 80s in general were a rough damn ride for greater Birmingham, which had a rust belt economy in the middle of the Deep South.

View attachment 18038

Growing up around Pittsburgh, we had always heard that Birmingham was the "Pittsburgh of the South." When I went there in 2022 for the World Games, I saw why.

 

[Neutral Corner]

It's not what it once was. When I was a kid in Atlanta, the family of one of the guys I played Little League ball with moved to Birmingham. We drove over to visit them a year or so later, and halfway between Atl and Bhm the sky started to turn brown with smoke from the steel mills. The local economy may miss those jobs, but I much prefer the medical and tech which replaced them.

 

[goalmouth]

I'll just add that there are many Pullman-Standard-built freight cars still in active service hauling all manner of consumer and industrial freight. Pullman's descendant, Trinity, continues to build freight cars today.

It is also worth noting that U.S. railcar builders over the past 20 years have migrated a good portion of their production to Mexico.

 

[micropolitan guy]

I'll just add that there are many Pullman-Standard-built freight cars still in active service hauling all manner of consumer and industrial freight. Pullman's descendant, Trinity, continues to build freight cars today.

It is also worth noting that U.S. railcar builders over the past 20 years have migrated a good portion of their production to Mexico.

It's amazing that so many American corporations trust the production of their products to the Mexican work force, since Republicans tell us that Mexicans are a bunch of drug-addicted, raping, murdering criminals.

 

[goalmouth]

It's amazing that so many American corporations trust the production of their products to the Mexican work force, since Republicans tell us that Mexicans are a bunch of drug-addicted, raping, murdering criminals.

It's even more amazing that so many American corporations trust millions in political donations to a drug-addicted, raping criminal.

 

[ChrisLong]

How many American druggies, rapists and murderers were sneaking across the border to take away those train-building jobs from Mexicans?

 

[goalmouth]

I will note that when my editor visited the Mexico facility of a U.S. railcar builder, they had an armed escort from the airport.

 

[Hermes]

Currently reading "Fabulous Failure" (Highly recommend!) and the blame for NAFTA is wholly bipartisan.