A Sorrowful Look Inside Kalamazoo’s Checker Cab Plant Just Before They Closed

25+ photos taken hours before the doors were closed one final time at the Checker Cab factory in Kalamazoo.

It stands empty. Desolate. A factory floor that once buzzed with activity and churned out over 8,000 cars a year at its peak production in 1962. Twenty years later, in 1982, they stopped making cars and by 2009, they were shutting down the plant. The security supervisor grabbed his camera and took one last look. He shared the photos with the Vanished Kalamazoo Facebook group and now you can see them.

You can almost hear the slow, melancholy music as you scroll through the gallery of pictures, seeing the powerful machinery idled forever. To their credit, it looks like they cleaned the place up pretty well and didn't leave it trashed like Parchment's paper plant.

Oh, in case you were wondering, the final cab to roll off the Kalamazoo assembly line went straight to the Gilmore Car Museum and currently has 9.8 miles on the odometer.

Bonus Video: Veteran Checker Cab Employee Shares History of the Kalamazoo Plant