Truck production in Oshawa falls 14 per cent: automaker still leads Canada in sales

GM Canada can crow about finishing the first half of 2026 as Canada’s best-selling automaker, but the company’s bread-and-butter – the Oshawa-made Chevrolet Silverado pick-up truck – is facing a sales drop of more than 14 per cent, largely due to the plant losing a shift and more than 500 workers in February.

General Motors delivered 148,540 vehicles in the first six months of the year – a big jump in electric vehicle sales helped – but the spectre of additional layoffs in Oshawa still looms over the plant.

There is chatter from some industry insiders, in fact, that the plant will lose the light-duty truck production when the company switches to the next-generation vehicles later this year.

Auto Forecast Solutions, a ‘business intelligence’ software company based out of suburban Philadelphia, reported last month that the assembly plant in Oshawa, which makes both light-duty and heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverado trucks (the only plant to do so), is going to lose light-duty production when the next-gen Silverado begins production in the fall.

Losing that production could mean going down to one shift, a major blow to a workforce already dealing with decreased production and a reduced workforce from U.S. tariffs.

The company denied the report, with Jennifer Wright, GM Canada’s Executive Director of Communications saying GM is not making any move to reduce production in Oshawa.

Wright did acknowledge that production locations for future light-duty Silverados have “not been disclosed,” but cited a recent $343 million investment in the plant as evidence of truck production at the plant remaining a priority.

“There is no planned production scale-back at Oshawa Assembly,” she said. “Oshawa Assembly continues to play a key role in GM’s full-size truck lineup, and current employment and shift structure are expected to be retained when the plant transitions to next- generation truck production.”

The company says it is preparing to build the next generation of gas-powered full-size pickups, without any promises that production will include light-duty trucks.

Oshawa Assembly was able to celebrate the 500,000th Chevrolet Silverado to roll off the line since the plant re-opened in late 2021, but with rumours swirling that some of that truck production is on its way out, making it to a million might be a challenge.

GM Canada is also reveling in one million aftermarket parts produced in the past four-and-a-half years, with the milestones reflecting the “scale and consistency” of manufacturing operations in Oshawa, noted GM Canada President Jack Uppal.

Unifor, the union representing auto workers (and other sectors) in Canada, reached an agreement this weekend with Ford to establish a “pattern,” that will guide the union in negotiations with GM and Stellantis.