Dodge Sherwood Heavy Truck Assembly Plant

[Elwood1968]

Can anyone help me identify the location of the Dodge heavy truck assembly plant, aka Sherwood Assembly? The large Dodge trucks [[semi-tractors, military M37s, etc.) were built there until Dodge stopped building heavy trucks in 1975.

I've been told that it was at the southwest corner of 9 Mile Road and Sherwood Ave. in Warren, on the east side of the railroad tracks from the main Dodge Truck plant, but the Detroit Edison aerials from '49 through '61 at the online Wayne State collection don't show anything at that location that looks big enough. The other buildings on the east side of the tracks between 9 and 8 Mile were part of the R. C. Mahon Co., a steel fabricator, I think.

Could Sherwood Assembly have been south of 8 Mile?

[Lowell]

Look around the middle of this Old Car Factories thread.

[Elwood1968]

Thanks for the reply, Lowell. That thread has some great info, and was the first place I went when I started searching for info on Sherwood. But the only specific reference to Sherwood Assembly in there that I could find is to the 9 Mile and Sherwood Ave. location, which seems unlikely given the DTE aerials.

I have a friend who works in facilities at Chrysler's Auburn Hills HQ, and even he is unsure as to where the Sherwood plant was located. I was hoping someone on here might have worked there, or at one of the nearby Chrysler plants, and could remember where the Dodge heavies were built.

[gnome]

Elwood, just a thought, but is it possible the factory was camouflaged? I know that factories on the west coast were disguised to look like all sorts of things: neighborhoods, parks and orchards.

Not sure if that would apply to the aerials from 1949, but maybe...

[Wheels]

Mound Sherwood and Hoover were all one complex.

[MikeM]

I don't see anything listed along Sherwood south of Eight Mile belonging to Chrysler in any directories of the era. On the older thread, the late member PSIP claims the Nine Mile/Sherwood plant made heavy trucks. Maybe he means the Nine Mile press plant on the west side of the tracks which, despite its name, had a Mound Road address.

[Wheels]

http://www.allpar.com/corporate/fact...ren-truck.html

[Hornwrecker]

Dodge moved production of heavy trucks from the Mound Rd truck plant, to a building they purchased at 9 Mile and Sherwood [[SW corner) in the mid to late 1960s [[later the Everfresh Juice Co). They later moved some of the production over to the old Divco factory on Hoover. It lasted until 1975 when they ceased production. Prior to this, all Dodge trucks were made on the same assembly line in the Mound Rd factory. Before this, they were made on Lynch Rd, which later became the axle plant.

[[Thanks to my friend Joe for the info, whose father worked at Dodge Truck for forty years, and is a bit of a truck historian.)

[Elwood1968]

Thanks everyone for the responses.

Hornwrecker, that's the story I've read, too, although that's the first time that I've read about the Everfresh building being the heavy truck assembly. It's hard to believe that, even at the low volume of Dodge heavies, the Everfresh building would have been large enough. Maybe the heavy assembly process was more of a cell build than a moving assembly line.

I also recall reading [[maybe in the Hall of Fame thread) that the Sherwood assembly building had been torn down, but I believe that the Everfresh building is still standing? [[I haven't been in that area in several years to verify).

I think the Divco building was for telephone truck assembly, but not the heavies.

I have a history of the M37 military 3/4 ton trucks that claims the M37s were first built in the 1/2 ton truck plant [[Warren Truck) when they were introduced in 1951, but then moved to the "route van building, which later became known as the military truck building." [[M37 The Production Story, Zentmyer, 1987) I've recently seen a photo of M37 production that shows what appears to be a dedicated assembly line, although the photo is not dated, and M37s were built from 1951 to 1954, and then from 1958 to 1968. Since over 100,000 M37s were built, I don't believe that they could have been built alongside the commercial heavies in a building the size of the Everfresh one, so the "route van" or "military truck" building must have been yet another assembly plant near to the 1/2 ton Warren Truck assembly.