When Tim Bennett completed his 8-year service in the U.S. Army, there was only one place he wanted to raise his family: back home in West Virginia.

At the time, Bennett was training in Louisiana, a thousand miles from the Mountain State where he grew up. The distance, however, couldn’t keep news of a new opportunity near his hometown from making its way to the bayou. It was 1997 and Toyota was hiring for its newest American manufacturing plant, a $400 million facility with capacity to produce 300,000 four-cylinder engines annually.

So, Bennett made the trip to West Virginia to apply for the job, but when he got there, he found himself in line with a few hundred other job seekers; in fact, 19,000 people applied for the 300 initial jobs.

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