I have been in your shoes so let me help shed some light.
In early June of 2022 I also put a grand deposit down on my Tundra. I tracked the truck through the rail system which showed me a ship date of late June and of a delivery date to my local yard of early July. Around the 4th of July the rail showed delivery to my local yard near Cleveland, Ohio. Then the dreaded news from my sales person said it was in QC Hold!
Like you I wanted to know what the heck does this mean!? I did receive my truck on August 11 which is the same day it was shipped from the holding rail yard.
I was fortunate enough to meet a “Local Toyota Engineer “ In the fall of 2022. I had some issues with my Tundra and Toyota was in the area and wanted to take a look at my truck. In that time I asked the engineer about the QC hold process. Long story short Toyota sends out Local Engineers in your region to go to either dealerships and rail yards to perform work on Toyota vehicles that require specifics that your mechanics cannot do.
In our cases the QC holds are because there is a quality or materials or software upgrade/fix from Toyota that became active after the ship date. In my case it was a back up camera issue that had to have a software fix. I told the engineer that my back up camera update could have easily been done by my local Toyota mechanic and the engineer said that it falls under the NTSB regulations that once the vehicles leave the plant they cannot to be sold / released until all vehicles meet the NTSB requirements.
The problem with QC hold is availability of the local Toyota engineers. There is only a handful and we wait until the vehicles are fixed. Unfortunately this is a grey area and the dealer and customers are left in the dark on specifics.
While I tracked my Tundra to the rail yard and it sat for a month! My local dealership received Tundras that were built after mine! It was so frustrating to say the least.
Hope this helps with understanding the QC hold process at least for our vehicles.
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