GM closing Boxwood Road, last auto plant in Delaware

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Joe Trincia, 51, of Bear, Del., returns Monday to his job at the General Motors auto-assembly plant just as he's done countless times since he was a 19-year-old kid lucky enough to land a decent-paying manufacturing job.

But this will be his last recall. He joins just 414 other workers for the final two weeks of the Boxwood Road plant.

"I'll miss the people," said Trincia, who is raising his grandchildren and needs another job. "I was a young guy for so long and then suddenly I'm one of the oldest guys here."

When the plant's lights go out for good the week of July 27, it will mark the end of Delaware's long ties to carmaking, an industry that leaders at DuPont here had a major role creating.

After 62 years, an industry that once was the state's second-largest private employer, behind DuPont, vaporized in less than eight months. Chrysler shuttered its massive assembly plant in Newark, Del., in December, a few months before it sought bankruptcy protection.

GM, which got out of bankruptcy court Friday, announced in June it would close the complex near Newport, Del., opened in 1947.

"It is the end of an era. And it is the end of the Northeast's exposure to the auto industry," said Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director of Moody's Economy.com. "It's the loss of the ability to maintain a manufacturing base in the area."

Jolted by back-to-back closings

The plants faced threats periodically since the 1970s, but the rapid demise of both is stunning.

"It's kinda like having a parent that's really sick. You might know they're going to die ... but when the end comes it's a shock," said John Stapleford, senior economist at Moody's Economy.com.

The fallout won't be as severe as in Michigan, Ohio or Indiana, but there'll be pain. The GM plant alone is a $182 million-a-year economic engine, the Delaware Economic Development Office estimates. And Delaware is a small state, with not a lot more people than the metro area of Dayton, Ohio.