(August 7, 2010) SAN ANTONIO — Toyota added 1,000 workers to build Tacoma pickups at its San Antonio truck plant and is using the factory's full capacity for the first time after a rocky start.

The company this week marked the start of compact Tacoma production in the plant built to make only larger Tundra pickups when it opened in late 2006. Lower demand for Tundras than Toyota expected and the closing of its former California joint-venture plant this year led it to move Tacoma output to Texas at a cost of $100 million.

“No one forecast the overall collapse of the U.S. market in 2008, and certainly we didn't anticipate full-size trucks would fall as much as they did,” Jim Lentz, Toyota's U.S. sales chief, told reporters Thursday at the factory. The company's current 270,000-unit North American pickup run rate, including 50,000 Tacomas built in Mexico, “looks about right,” he said.

Toyota planned to sell at least 200,000 Tundras a year when it began building the truck in 2006 in both Texas and Indiana. Sales missed that target in the model's first full year, and U.S. volume shrank in subsequent years as fuel prices rose to a record in 2008 and later as the recession curbed demand.

Toyota sold 79,385 Tundras in the U.S. last year.

The addition of Tacoma raised investment in the Texas plant to $1.4 billion, Atsushi Niimi, executive vice president for global manufacturing, said in an interview in San Antonio. It may take a decade to recoup that investment, compared with seven years for most Toyota plants, he said.

Lentz said he doesn't expect the San Antonio plant to be enlarged anytime soon. Toyota had said in October that it would hire 850 for the additional work. The number increased after Toyota discovered Tacoma assembly required more manpower than planned, said Dan Antis, plant manager.