(December 11, 2009) With all the bad press recently over recalls, Toyota has some good news.

Toyota is running overtime at all its North American plants to keep up with demand and replenish low stocks of vehicles, according to a story in Automotive News.

Toyota's latest boost in North American production comes at its plant in Woodstock, Ontario. Toyota, seizing on strong sales momentum for its small RAV4 crossover, said today that it will “immediately” begin hiring a second shift of 800 workers for the Woodstock plant.

“Despite the market decline, the model is selling better than last year,” Ray Tanguay, executive vice president in charge of Toyota's North American manufacturing and engineering group, said in a phone interview the automotive trade magazine. “This is a vote of confidence that the market is recovering.”

Through the end of November, Toyota has sold 132,346 RAV4s in the United States this year, up 3 percent from 128,225 in the same period last year.

Toyota's robust production schedule represents a reversal of its situation in the first quarter of this year, when it was curtailing production days, reducing headcount and thinning out backed-up inventories along with the rest of the U.S. industry.

The start of a second shift at Woodstock was delayed last year as economic problems mounted, and it is more than a year behind schedule, Tanguay said.

Toyota opened a Web portal this morning to begin rapidly recruiting and training workers to get Woodstock up to full annual production of 150,000 vehicles in time for its new fiscal year, which starts on April 1.