GM wrings more pickups out of busy plant

Dealers are starving for more hot-selling Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickups. And workers at General Motors' St. Louis-area truck plant are starving themselves to eke out a few more of them.

The Wentzville, Mo., factory recently cut an unpaid lunch break, part of a broader schedule reshuffling that eliminated the six-minute production lulls between shifts. The result: An extra 18 minutes of production in a three-shift day, which should translate into more than 3,500 more trucks a year.

It's a small example of how automakers are finding ways to wring more production from their factories as sales march higher, rather than sinking capital into new plants.