Hino Shifting Medium-Duty Work to W. Va.

Hino Motors Ltd. said it will halt assembly of trucks in California and shift the work to a West Virginia factory to consolidate U.S. production, Bloomberg reported.

Medium-duty truck work at TABC Inc., a Toyota parts plant in Long Beach, Calif., will end in July, a company official said. All of Hino’s U.S. output will be at its Williamstown, W. Va., factory that opened in November, Bloomberg said.

Hino, the commercial-vehicle unit of Toyota Motor Corp., is making the change as a sluggish U.S. economy cuts demand for commercial vehicles. Orders for Class 5-7 trucks, fell by 56% through March, analyst David Leiker of Robert Baird & Co. said in a report this month, Bloomberg reported.

Since late 2004, TABC has assembled more than 2,000 Hino trucks annually from parts shipped from Japan. The 30 employees in Long Beach will be given new assignments at the plant, Bloomberg said.