MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-09-30

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Get ready to go beyond the headlines and join a meaningful conversation with people from around the state. You're listening to MidDays with Gerard Gibert here on Supertalk, Mississippi.

Gerard Gibert (1:02)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MidDays Supertalk, Mississippi. I'm your host, Gerard Gibert, on location for day two of the Digital Innovation 2026 Megapop that's being conducted at the Huntington Bank Conference Center in Tupelo, Mississippi. Rhino Safe & Sound, back in the Supertalk headquarters today, will be guiding you through the middle of your day with facts, fodder, and fine music on this.

Well, we made it to the middle of the old week, and after several weeks of drought-like conditions, Rhino looks like we're poised to receive a little pre-sip this weekend. Why does it have to be on the weekend? Yeah. Though we need it. We do. We need the rain.

I got to start out by sharing an experience I had yesterday after the show. I was invited for a guided tour of the Toyota factory, the Toyota manufacturing facility just northwest of our position here in Tupelo, in Blue Springs, Mississippi. This factory launched in 2011

We're going to be hosting a remote up there in about a month, I think, or so.

What a joy it was. What a great experience. I met at the Experience Center, and that's kind of an outlying building that's just in front of the factory there.

And I met with my two tour guides. We hopped on a little electric shuttle and traveled down the hill to the factory itself, entered the main entry, and got on an extended seat golf cart. They got about, I'd say, seven or eight of them, sort of lined up right in the entry area there. And we traveled about through the factory floor, had headsets on, of course, and safety goggles. And one of the individuals was driving us, transporting us, and the other was narrating the tour. What a great job he did. And so fascinating. And I guess the thing that struck me the most was we've got, is we talked so much about automation and technology and AI and all that sort of stuff. And of course, we're at an event where that's a prime focus here at the Megapop in Tupelo. But seeing this fusion of human skill, human talent, human muscle, with this precision manufacturing environment, it's just fascinating to, again, just watching humans and machines work together to produce the Toyota Corolla, the only factory I learned yesterday in North America that produces the Corolla. Now, at one time, I'm not sure where it ranks now, was the top selling car in the country. So, every Corolla that is sold by a Toyota dealer in North America is produced at this factory in Blue Springs, Mississippi, with a capacity of about 180,000 Corollas per year. That is amazing. Some 2,300 employees work two shifts. And the narrator, Rhino, said, the normal day shift, the eight to five, whatever it is, it's five days a week, 40 hours a week, of course, eight hours a day. And then the night shift is four days a week, 10 hours a day. So they go to the football games on Friday. I thought that was pretty cool.

But 2,300 employees, and one thing I noticed, you could tell a lot about the facial expressions, right, and the pep and the step of employees as to whether or not they like what they're doing, that they're happy at work, and happy employees produce better products and services. And I noticed that. I observed that. They're all smiling. They're moving at a rapid rate of speed, and they all waved as we're moving about in the little golf cart. They were all waving. I thought that was pretty cool as well. Now, the other thing that fascinated me were these robotic vehicles that transport materials, tires, car seats, bumpers, fenders, all sorts of parts that come off the various lines where those parts are produced, loaded up on those robots, and they know exactly where to go. And they're moving all about that floor.

And of course, as we're moving about as well, I'm quite sure it's based on the corporate policy, as you can imagine, when you're in a vehicle, there are people walking around, you got these robots, and so you stop. And the driver looks all around, honks the horn, and then signals which way they're going. And by the way, even the people on foot do the same thing. They stop, let everybody know which way they're going, and they point which way they're going. So it's kind of like in the old days, at least when I was learning how to drive, you didn't always assume that you'd use a blinker. So you were required to use a blinker, I think, in accordance with our laws, to indicate which way you're turning when you are. But you could substitute hand signals, and you used to have to learn the hand signals. You gotta remember, cars back then didn't have air conditioning. So you'd have the windows rolled down, and you'd put your left arm up, and that meant you were turning to the right, and you'd extend it out straight, meaning you're turning to the left. Well, it's sort of a system like that, moving around.