Daimler Truck is laying off 573 workers at its plant and services center in Mount Holly on Friday. Workers will be paid through Sept. 9 at the plant, which mostly manufactures Freightliner trucks.
“The reduction of truck manufacturing and resultant mass layoff is presently expected to be temporary, but of an unknown duration at this time,” according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with the state.
Bumping rights exist for employees represented by the United Auto Workers at the site. Employees are also entitled to layoff benefits per the collective bargaining agreement, according to the notice.
That agreement includes the plan to continue pay through Sept. 9. The company also will pay COBRA healthcare premiums for two months, in addition to the six months provided for under the collective bargaining agreement.
More than 77% of the workers being laid off, or 445 people, are classified as truck assemblers.
Freightliner Trucks opened the Mount Holly plant in 1979 and it employed about 2,000 workers last year, according to union leaders. The plant is about 10 miles west of Charlotte in Gaston County. In addition to Freightliner trucks, the plant makes an e-coated cab for Western Star units built at the Cleveland Truck Plant in Rowan County, which employs about 2,000 workers.
A Freightliner parts plant in Gastonia employs about 1,000 workers. Daimler is the largest manufacturing employer in Gaston County, and the third-largest employer overall, behind CaroMont Health and Gaston County Schools.
Affiliated companies, including Daimler Trucks North America, Thomas Built Buses and SelecTrucks of America, have a combined five sites in North Carolina. Those sites employ almost 7,000 workers in the state, according to the United Auto Workers union.
In May, Daimler Truck Financial Services, which provides financing, leasing and insurance options for Daimler Truck North America’s commercial vehicles, announced it would invest $7.8 million to locate its headquarters in Charlotte, a move that’s expected to create 276 jobs. The German company Daimler has its US headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
Commercial truck sales declined 6.5% through the first quarter of 2025, compared with a year earlier, according to ACT Research. Commercial truck sales totaled 105,640 through the first quarter.
Commercial truck demand had weakened since the start of the year, before the Trump Administration started promoting tariffs, said Patrick Manzi, chief economist at the American Automobile Dealers Association. “Given the uncertainty of the current sales environment and the longer the tariffs remain in place, sales forecasts are likely to be reduced further,” he said in a March 31 note.