FENTON, Mo. - With little hope that 50 years of car and truck-making in Fenton will ever be revived, state and local officials Friday began to shift their focus away from saving the twin Chrysler plants.

Now, they hope to soften the blow for thousands of laid-off workers and fill the hole left in the region's economy.

After a "tough" 90-minute conversation with union leaders and Jim Press, the deputy CEO of Chrysler Group LLC, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill was downbeat Friday afternoon.

"I don't think anybody left the meeting happy," she said.

Don Ackerman certainly didn't. The president of United Auto Workers 136 said he went into the meeting hoping to "see some light at the end of tunnel."

The union leader said he departed without spotting so much as a glimmer.

Without any promise of new Dodge Rams rolling off the line, Ackerman and state officials said the next step is to ease the landing for the many people shoved into unemployment by Chrysler's closure.

"These are workers with good skills and training," said Julie Gibson, director of the Missouri Division of Workforce Development. "We want to get these folks into good jobs," perhaps in "higher-growth" industries.

The last Dodge Ram pickup manufactured at the north plant rolled off the assembly line Thursday morning, eight months after the Fenton south plant produced its final minivan.

A skeleton crew will report to the north plant through July 10.

Chrysler spokesman Max Gates said the crews will perform maintenance work and pack production equipment and remaining truck parts for shipment to plants in Warren, Mich. and Saltillo, Mexico. Chrysler also builds Ram pickups at those two plants.

With the north plant on the brink of obsolescence, Ackerman said the next phase is negotiating an equitable severance package for Local 136 members who have yet to accept a buyout from the car company.

"I'm appreciative of what the (UAW) international and Chrysler does with the packages," he said. "But it does not take the place of an actual job."

State officials also are preparing for a Fenton future that does not include auto making.

Gibson said the state is preparing to launch a "regional transition center" to help Fenton workers prepare for new careers with job training and resume and personal finance advice. It could be open within a month, she said.

Local leaders also are starting to look ahead at drawing new manufacturers to St. Louis, and finding a new use for Chrysler's massive Fenton plants.

"We're on it," McCaskill said. "We're going to work hard to make sure (the Fenton plant) is not going to become a ghost town."

But she wouldn't discuss any specific companies that may be considering the plant.

The St. Louis region has a lot to offer manufacturers, said Chris Chung, chairman of the Missouri Auto Industry Task Force.

"There's a great building" in Fenton. A great workforce. A manufacturing tradition here," said Chung, whose group is due to recommend some next steps to Gov. Jay Nixon in two weeks. "These are things that would be wasted if we don't find a way to re-purpose those assets."

St. Louis and Fenton would do well, he added, to draw on the model established in the aftermath of massive local layoffs at McDonnell-Douglas (now Boeing) in the 1990s.

Many of those displaced workers, including a fair number of engineers, started their own companies.

"We need to allow (the auto workers) to take what they've learned and build something new with it," Chung said. "That's going to be one of the many ways the region begins to replace what has been lost."

Still, the losses have been steep for an automaking hub that once rivaled any city short of Detroit.

Five years ago, there were 11,000 people building cars for a living in the St. Louis area, according to state data.

Next month, when General Motors cuts down to one shift at its Wentzville van plant, there will be 1,000.