GM has 10,000 full-sized SUVs parked in Texas awaiting chips

Earlier this year, we marveled here on the ground and from space at the thousands of F-150 pickups Ford parked at sites around the Midwest while the pickups awaited components. The Detroit Free Press reports that General Motors is pursuing the same strategy as Ford, called "build-shy." The term means building as much of a vehicle as possible, with final assembly waiting for the last components. As we all know, the last components this year are the ones requiring semiconductor chips. When Freep covered the situation at GM in May, the paper heard from sources that the automaker had more than 30,000 full-sized and mid-sized pickups parked in the U.S. Midwest and in Mexico, as well as about 2,000 full-sized SUVs built at GM's Arlington, Texas, plant parked not far away. According to the most recent figures, the SUV backlog has reached more than 10,000 units parked around Arlington and in the nearby town of Midlothian, Texas.

The Arlington plant is one of the only GM facilities to escape downtime this year due to the chip shortage. The plant builds around 1,200 SUVs per day over three shifts, those being the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade. As at other plants, the build-shy vehicles go on car carriers that will deposit them at the waiting lots.