By Carroll Wilson
TELEGRAM MANAGING EDITOR
HOUSTON - Rudy B. puts chrome wheels on burly Tundra pickups every work day after a 45-minute drive through Houston traffic, something he’s been happy to do for about 15 of his 25 years with Gulf States Toyota Inc.
The decade before that he drove farther to get to the Port of Houston, where GST had its vehicle processing center at the time.
That’s how much he likes his job.
“Good people,” he said, smiling, as television crews, newspaper reporters and photographers and city officials wandered past his work station during a Friday tour.
Leaders and media representatives from Bell County and Waco walked through the kind of plant that Gulf States will open about two years from now on 100 acres in the industrial park at Central Pointe in Temple.
The announcement was made Nov. 15.
The processing center, a VPC in official company jargon, will initially employ 220 full-time hourly workers, but GST plans to eventually have two centers on the Temple property.
Like Rudy, the people hired by GST will be skilled. The family-owned company, a franchisee for Toyota, has no unskilled positions, according to Gary Cole, director for transformation integration for GST in Houston.
With the exception of a few supervisors, everyone working at the Temple plant will come from the Temple area, he said.
They will be recruited, Cole said, through every possible medium. And GST will partner with the state workforce resource offices to receive applications. GST wants a diverse group of employees, Cole said.
They will be trained, in part, by instructors working for the Temple Economic Development Corp. and Temple College, and, later, in an on-site stand-alone building.
“For the type of work they do, (the pay scale) will be at or above market,” Cole said. And the benefits? He said, “They’re better than most.”
Since GST is not owned by Toyota, its corporate culture does not exactly mirror that of Toyota, he said.
“We’re a small family-owned business and we treat our employees more like family,” Cole said, as the group walked from one steel building to another. He greeted workers by first name all along the way. And they called him “Gary.”
But, he said that like Toyota, GST settles for nothing but the best, period.
Quality is of the utmost importance.
But, safety and “having some fun” are also important components of the corporate culture, Cole said.
“They work hard when they work, but we want them to have lives away from here, too,” he said.
Some of the visitors from Temple later agreed that the atmosphere in the company’s buildings felt free of the kind of tension that sometimes characterizes workplaces.
And the employees, all dressed in uniforms provided by the company, appeared to enjoy what they were doing. Most of them worked in teams, and you could hear gentle kidding going on in the background.
What kind of jobs will people have when the Temple operation starts up?
Some will be engineers. Some will be drivers. Some will be loaders. Some will install electrical systems. Some will manage and lead. And some will be product developers. Many other skill sets were observed at use on the tour. No employees will be members of a union.
Here’s what GST does: It “customizes” cars and pickups from all 19 lines and 172 models Toyota builds.
Here’s how it works: Dealers from the five-state area covered by GST tell VPC what Toyota customers want, and GST buys the parts to make the customers happy. About 60 percent of the accessories are original from Toyota, and about 40 percent are bought from other vendors.
If a dealer needs three Tundra pickups that are all painted Aggie maroon to have tan leather upholstery, custom sound systems and big chrome wheels, he orders them through GST, and the employees at the VPC make the dealer’s dreams come true.
In fact, Cole said, pointing to a tiny Toyota with skinny tires and oddly spoked wheels with a red SOLD sign on its windshield, if a dealer has a customer who wants a specific car with specific treatments not listed among usual options, the VPC will do that, as well.
So, if a dealer believes customers will want Camrys with spoilers, GST will put spoilers on Camrys.
If a dealer has requests for Tundras with black wheels and spoilers, GST will try to make that happen.
Or if a dealer sees the market changing so that a lilliputian Yaris tricked out with spoilers and pinstripes is in demand, GST will give them what they want.
Someone working at the GST VPC in Temple will do exactly what Rudy B. and the other 500 workers here do: put stuff on and in cars and do it to Toyota’s specifications, whether the stuff is for the interior or the exterior. (The VPC does not accessorize engines.)
In Temple, though, at the outset, the Rudy B.s will just not have as many vehicles to work on as the Houston plant does.
In 2002, the Houston workforce accessorized 167,000 cars for about 150 dealers, 79 of whom are located in Texas.
In 2007, that number soared to 266,000.
And that is about all the cars the Houston VPC can handle, Cole said, because the rail capacity is maxed out.
Thus, the need for the Temple plant.
When it opens, it will handle 600 cars per day or about 150,000 per year.
Later, there’s room at the Temple site to build another VPC and drive another 150,000 through the industrial park location.
And that will mean the creation of another nearly 250 jobs for the Bell County area.
However, the location of the VPC in Temple means more than just those jobs.
Already, one business closely associated with GST must come to Temple, too.
That’s GST Transport Systems. This GST is not owned by Gulf States Toyota.
But, GST Transport is the only company GS Toyota uses to move finished vehicles from the Houston site to dealers.
Cole said the other GST is a “premium” moving company with the best accident and incident record in the country - “less than one in 8,000 hauled,” according to Cole.
They have 300 trucks and 350 drivers located in Houston. They’ll have to hire drivers and have trucks in Temple.
cwilson@temple-telegram.com
