MTFCA Forum

I was under the impression that the Highland plant in the 1920s was used only for parts manufacturing and parts assembly.

First shift is what most would consider the late/night/graveyard shift. Second shift would be the morning and the third would be afternoons (the third watch). Detroit was always a Third Shift town (with the factories), that is why bars and restaurants could star serving alcohol at 7:00AM, the first shift was getting out and they did not want breakfast, they wanted dinner. Forty-five+ years of factory work, fist shift was ALWAYS the night shift. You should read about Carnegie and The Long Turn when day shifts had to work 24 hours straight.

All the times I worked the graveyard shift it was either the First shift, third shift, or the dog watch... (Does a greyhound shift go faster than a St. Bernard shift??)... depends on who you worked for and how they set up their scheduling boards...

I am guessing for prodution purposes the factory had a set time to pull numbers - I know when we did numbers it was exactly at Midnight (00:00:00), we even went so far as to switch physical ledger sheets, then part of my job for the next 3 hours was to compile them into the various stats that management wanted. I'm sure Ford's had a much more robust system than we did...

And BTW - we knew which local hash houses were open at 5 or 6 AM for dinner, which bars opened at 6 AM, etc. It was our own community, and it was pretty awesome to be part of the night owls, working while the rest of the world was asleep!

ModelT46 wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 03, 2021 2:35 pm

I was under the impression that the Highland plant in the 1920s was used only for parts manufacturing and parts assembly.

They did manufacturing and final assembly.