Soaring Gas Prices And Economic Hard Times Hit Home: General Motors Announces The Closing Of Four Truck Plants And May Drop The Hummer Line

General Motors has announced that they are closing four truck plants and may completely drop the Hummer line of vehicles completely.

Faced with soaring gas prices and a shift in the habits of the American car buyer, General Motors felt they were forced to make some major changes.

General Motors said that they will shift some of the production into cars, which are typically much more fuel efficent than most trucks.

But what this also means is that many more hard working American blue collar workers are going to lose their jobs.

How many manufacturing jobs can the United States keep on losing?

Here is a portion of the source article:

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_HL22tswTWE&refer=home

General Motors Corp., struggling to return to profit amid record gasoline prices, said it will close four truck plants, make more small cars, and may drop its Hummer brand of large sport-utility vehicles.

Gasoline exceeding $4 a gallon represents ``a structural change, not just a cyclical change,'' Rick Wagoner, the largest U.S. automaker's chief executive officer, told reporters today before its annual shareholders' meeting in Wilmington, Delaware.

The four plant closings will save $1 billion a year and cut North American capacity by 700,000 for trucks and, with added shifts at car factories, by 500,000 overall, he said. At Hummer, ``we're considering all options from a complete revamp to a partial or complete sale of the brand,'' Wagoner said.