A handful of luxury marquees who make vehicles on the East Coast idle’d their plants and stored their exports safely away.

Hurricane Florence is already bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard and that means car companies with factories scattered throughout the East Coast have already readied employees and stored away inventory ready for export. As per Greenville News on their report on nearby Spartanburg County, home to BMW’s production and testing facility for all its SUVs, BMW safely transported thousands of BMWs SUVs that normally would’ve loaded onto ships in the port of Charlston.

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From Spartanburg, its employees who work at the BMW plant produce the BMW X3, X4, X5, and X6 with thousands of SUVs coming off the assembly line in a given week. With literally millions at stake,rail cars were brought in and these SUVs were diverted to secure holding areas. And with so many of BMWs suppliers also on the Eastern Seaboard, they kept a close eye on any supplier affected. One supplier down and with no surplus of parts means production grinds to a halt. To get ahead of the Hurricane, BMW shipped as many SUVs as they could.

According to CNET Road Show, Volvo had to idle its just two week old production facility as Hurricane Florence approached its Charleston plant. Volvo makes the S60, and soon, the XC90, at this facility. This isn’t their first rodeo as the CP of communications stated construction was halted several times while the plant was being built but this is the first time production stopped.

In addition, Mercedes-Benz, who has a plant in South Charleston churning out Sprinter Vans, stopped making said vans earlier in the week as a precaution.

Although Hurricane Florence was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane which emboldened some in management to keep their factories open, what we’re finding out is that while the intensity of the hurricane at its peak has died down, there’s still a lot of destructive power coming through.

Hopefully, management takes the hint this time and relieves employees of work sooner than later.

Better safe than sorry.

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