On July 24, General Motors UAW workers Teana Dowdell and Sharon Williams started their work day at a carpool lot off I-75 and Adams Road in Troy.

The early afternoon sun bore down on them as they set off together for their job 45 miles north at GM's Flint Assembly plant. When they return, the park-and-ride lot will be shrouded in darkness. It will be near midnight. This 90-minute round-trip commute to work is their daily routine Monday-Saturday.

"I gotta do what I gotta do. I'm blessed and grateful to have a job. The only bad thing is the commute," said Dowdell. "There's more than 100 of us that commute. Most of the people who transferred to Flint lived in metro Detroit so you have people coming from Downriver, Eastpointe, Warren, Detroit, Dearborn."

Some even commute weekly the nearly 270 miles from Lordstown, Ohio. Like Dowdell, the commuters are thankful for a job, especially at Flint, where GM builds heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra crew and regular cab pickups. The hot-selling pickups offer a lot of overtime for fat paychecks and solid job security.

Still, many of the transferred workers, who signed three-year deals to work there, are reluctant to move to Flint. They have family concerns, housing complications and many cling to a hazy hope that GM will reallocate product to their old plants and bring them home.

Carpool problems

For now, commuters to Flint started a Facebook page called "DHam to Flint." On it, 168 members alert each other to traffic, road construction and other commuting concerns.

Dowdell, 32, uses the page often. She worked 11 years at Detroit-Hamtramck plant, the last seven years on the assembly line where GM still builds the Chevrolet Impala and Cadillac CT6 sedans after discontinuing the once-revolutionary Volt.

Last November, GM said it would "unallocate" product at four U.S. plants, indefinitely idling them and leaving some 2,800 active U.S. hourly workers in jeopardy. Detroit-Hamtramck is one of those plants and is scheduled to shutter in January. The others included: Lordstown, Warren Transmission and Baltimore Transmission.

GM also cut about 4,000 white-collar jobs and closed the assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario. The restructuring plan will save GM about $2.5 billion this year, it said.

More:GM's hourly workers in Warren speak out ahead of debates, factory shutdown

More:GM CEO Mary Barra's factory visits are more about goodwill

Dowdell fretted about her future until mid-January when GM offered her a transfer to Flint. It was a relief to stay in Michigan, it's a good job and lucrative pay, she said. But her husband works in metro Detroit. They have two kids, a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old, whom her parents in Troy help watch. She could not move her family from Troy to Flint. To further complicate matters, Dowdell's Cadillac XT4 SUV is leased, so she is limited to driving 10,000 miles a year.

"I have put 8,000 miles, since the beginning of March, on my car," said Dowdell, who is shopping for another car. "I spend $50 to $60 a week in gas."

Dowdell and Williams, 55, who lives in Center Line near Warren, take turns driving. They tried to get five- to-15 people in a carpool using Michivan, but it was too difficult to coordinate the various shifts and overtime each worker faces. In fact, some days Williams and Dowdell have to drive separately because of scheduling conflicts.

Dowdell said many hope the UAW will create more stability as it bargains now with GM for a new contract. The current contract expires Sept. 14.

"I hope the people who want to go back to D-Ham have the opportunity to do so, that's what I hope they negotiate for us," said Dowdell. "If D-Ham does open and I do decide to go back, because I do like Flint, I will stay in Troy. I grew up in Troy. Right now, I'd rather do the commute to Flint."

GM's help

GM has assured its affected hourly workers that it has jobs for all of them at its other plants, especially those "that support growth areas of the business such as Flint Assembly," which employs about 4,800 hourly workers. But often, the plants with jobs could be in other states, requiring a worker to make a permanent move to stay employed.

To date, here are how many GM workers have transferred to Flint, according to GM:

530-plus transfers (or accepted transfer offers) from Detroit-Hamtramck.

120-plus transfers (or have accepted transfer offers) from Lordstown.

40-plus transfers (or have accepted transfer offers) from Warren Transmission.

80 Orion Assembly workers.

GM's Orion Assembly had been running a temporary second shift in the body shop while the rest of the plant runs on one shift. It ended that second shift and transferred those 80 workers to Flint.

But the job cuts could reverse in the future. CEO Mary Barra told analysts during GM's second-quarter earnings call that the automaker is heading toward a hiring spurt.

More:GM profit up 1.6% for quarter, driven by truck sales in North America

"We have jobs for every single hourly employee in the United States that was impacted by the transformation. And we'll continue to do those placements and then look at what is natural retirement," said Barra. "I predict by the time we get through this we'll be hiring for the needs that we have across the United States."

For its salaried workforce, Barra said, "We very carefully planned the transformation activities, not only reducing our overall salaried headcount, but also making sure we had resources in there with the right skill set. That went very well. And we are hiring now to replace attrition, but maintaining the lower cost level that we've worked so hard to get at fourth-quarter and first-quarter of this year."

At GM's self-driving unit, GM Cruise, Barra said it has 1,500 employees, but is "working hard" to hire and get to 2,000 by year-end.

In the meantime, GM said it is trying to make relocation seamless by giving all transferred employees a three-day orientation at Flint Assembly to help them transition to the plant and to the community.

Also, GM offers up to $30,000 to help employees transferring from Lordstown and Detroit-Hamtramck. That money can be used for housing, said GM. Those from Warren Transmission and Orion do not get financial support because they are considered local transfers in the GM-UAW labor agreement.

The UAW negotiated the $30,000 moving funds for its members and bargained that GM transfer any UAW workers to open jobs at other plants, said UAW Spokesman Brian Rothenberg.

The UAW contract specifies the area of hires eligible. Generally workers who are in plants 60 miles or more from the plant they are being relocated to are eligible, but workers within that area of hire under the contract get job offers first.

'Don't sell'

Despite those perks, Tommy Wolikow said shifting his job site from Lordstown to Flint was "one of the hardest things" he's ever had to do. He resisted it for several months, opting to commute some 270 miles between his home and job.

Wolikow, 37, was born and raised in Lordstown. He worked at GM's plant there for nine years, starting as a temporary worker. He hired on permanently on Jan. 14, 2013, a day he calls "one of the best" of his life.

"I felt I'm going to be OK, my family will be OK," said Wolikow, whose 72-year-old father worked at the Lordstown plant for nearly 43 years before retiring.

Wolikow bought a house in early 2015 2 miles from the Lordstown factory. But then GM idled Lordstown in February. On March 4, he transferred to Flint, where he works in the material department delivering parts to the assembly line.

"I remember President Trump saying, 'Don't sell your homes,'" said Wolikow. "I felt strong that he'd fight to do everything he could to make sure we didn't have to sell our homes and GM invests in us."

For four months, Wolikow spent the work week living in a mobile home in Swartz Creek near Flint with a roommate, a man who'd also transferred to Flint from Lordstown. On his days off, he would make the four-hour drive to Lordstown to visit his fiance and his children.

"The drive started wearing its welcome out after awhile," said Wolikow. "I've driven home about 10 times. Anyone who's up here and still has family back home, they're making that drive."

Last month Wolikow reluctantly put his Lordstown house on the market. His family has moved to Flint and he will buy a house there when his Lordstown house sells. Like others, Wolikow has a three-year contract to work in Flint, but looks to the UAW to negotiate a future for Lordstown.

More:Strike or no strike, UAW-Detroit Three contract talks could be brutal affair

"I hope to see my brothers and sisters working again in Lordstown and I hope to see me working in Lordstown again one day," said Wolikow. "If it's God's will, I will be here in Michigan and I will become a Michigan resident. But I'll always look at Lordstown, Ohio, as my home."

A Flint windfall

UAW workers Sean Crawford and John Ryan Bishop spent years doing a reverse commute. They worked at GM plants near metro Detroit, but lived near Flint.

Crawford, 37, transferred to Flint from Detroit-Hamtramck in February as part of GM’s restructuring. He was a metal finisher and robot cell operator at D-Ham and now works as a material driver transporting truck parts around the Flint plant. The transfer was easy for him because he hails from Flint, transferring to Warren a few years ago because of concerns about Flint’s water. This time, he lives in Flushing, just outside of Flint, and is happy to be home.

Bishop, who's 35, lives in Flint and works at Flint Assembly, but for three years, he made a 45-minute commute to GM's Orion plant in Lake Orion. He transferred to Flint four years ago and now lives 10 minutes from work at the Flint factory, which he said is a "windfall" for him.

But Flint-area realtors say GM transfers are generally not buying or renting homes yet.

"Most people are still living in Ohio and driving home on the weekends," said Henry Tannenbaum, owner of TDM Realtors in Flint. "We're not getting a lot of calls from GM transfers looking to rent houses."

If they were looking though, Flint housing is a deal, said Tannenbaum. A three-bedroom ranch with a two-car garage costs about $150,000 in a good neighborhood, he said.

To rent a one-bedroom apartment costs $450 to $900 depending on location and amenities, said Mark Piper, owner of Piper Reality in Flint. But despite those good deals, Piper has seen little business from GM transfers, he said.

Bishop said he understands why many Flint transfers are hesitant about housing. Glancing down the assembly line, he counted four workers who came from other GM plants over the past two years. As a result, Bishop said most of his coworkers have, "one foot in GM and one foot out because we've seen them unallocate product and idle plants. You have to keep the mindset of always developing a skill to get a job elsewhere."

For his part, Bishop, who installs electrical connections in the wheel wells of the heavy-duty Silverado, has a bachelor's degree from Central Michigan University. His GM job is a "good opportunity to provide for my family," but his sights are set on a future in a skilled trade. He was accepted into a GM apprentice program to become a journeyman.

Solo style

Not all UAW workers mind the commute. Mario Washington, 48, has worked 19 years for GM, the majority of that time at Detroit-Hamtramck as a forklift driver. In February, he transferred to Flint in the same job.

He works the day shift and heads out early each morning to drive the 68 miles from Detroit to Flint.

"I don't carpool. I'm a solo rider," said Washington.

"I'm still in the state I love. I could have went to Texas, Indiana ... but I'm a homeowner and my house is paid for and all my people are here," said Washington. "So I go to work happy every day. I love my job and I have a very good job."

In fact, Washington is a trained welder who could work for himself. Also, his wife is college educated, so he said he doesn't have to work at GM Flint if he didn't want to. After all there are pitfalls to plant work: The auto industry is volatile, the work is physically taxing and the hours are long.

"But after awhile, your thumb will stop hurting and your feet will stop hurting until you get used to it," said Washington. "It's a wonderful job and it's been good to me. I was able to go to Europe because of my job. I have nice things because of my job."

Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.