UPDATE: Ram Heavy Duty Production Remains Closed For Time Being:

Back in late April, we discussed that the Saltillo Truck Assembly Plant located in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico that manufactures several of the fourth-generation Ram Truck products (including the Ram Heavy Duty lineup) would be returning to work immediately. However, the plant has not returned to production due to the Mexican Government’s decision to extend the country’s stay in place order until the end of May.

However, FCA Spokeswoman Jodi Tinson reached out to us with the following statement…

“At this time, the plant remains down. However, during a Q1 earnings call on May 5th, our CEO Mike Manley did say that he expects all North American plants to be running by May 18th, with the exception of our plant in Belvidere, Ill., which won’t resume operations until June 1st.”

The Saltillo Truck plant currently builds several Ram Truck products which include…

• Ram 1500 Classic (Regular Cab for U.S. & Canada and all export models).
• Ram 2500 
• Ram 3500
• Ram 3500 Chassis Cab
• Ram 4000 (Mexican-market spec Chassis Cab model).
• Ram 4500 Chassis Cab
• Ram 5500 Chassis Cab

The plant usually consists of a 5,384 workforce (5,060 hourly; 324 salaried) on a 3-2-120 operating pattern, will only start with one shift for the time being. For those who aren’t familiar with the 3-2-120 pattern, the plant operates with three crews working two 10 hour shifts, over four days, for a total of 120 production hours per week.

Employees will follow the guidelines, MoparInsiders.com reported yesterday. Those new guidelines include…

The plan included the following steps.

• To ensure the safety of its employees, FCA would be sending temperature strips home with its employees to check their temperature before coming into work.
• Upon arrival to any of the company’s facilities, employees would walk through a thermal scanner to check for normal or abnormal body temperatures, and/or be scanned by an infrared thermometer before going through a confirmation process before entering.
• Each worker would have to wear surgical masks and nitrile gloves on top of their normal safety gear, which would be provided by the company.
• During the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of each shift, the employee would be required to disinfect their work station.
• Designated break areas have been separated, and some have even had divider walls installed to ensure social distancing at all times.
• FCA also had some certain areas of the lines, re-engineered using special prop tools and weld curtains to allow social distancing of 1 meter.

For those who have a Ram Heavy Duty pickup on order, you can expect slight delays due to the fact that the plant will only be running on one shift for the time being.

We will continue to follow the progress of the plant, as production ramps up. You can discuss the process of your orders in the HDRams.com owner forums.