Daimler closes an 84-year-old plant in Portland, just as it turns bullish on trucks

The starkest fact about the American truck-manufacturing business this week is that its largest player is shutting a historic factory at the very moment it expects demand to rise.

Daimler Truck North America confirmed it will end production at its Swan Island plant in Portland, Oregon, on 30 October, closing a site that has built trucks since 1947 and ending 84 years of Freightliner manufacturing in the city. A state filing puts the layoffs at 387, most of them union members represented by the Machinists. Production of the Western Star X-Series and the battery-electric eCascadia and eM2 models moves to North Carolina and South Carolina.

The company is at pains to frame this as consolidation, not retreat. Portland keeps its North American headquarters, its engineering and testing operations, and a new $40 million engineering facility opened only days before the closure was announced. Daimler calls it an effort to optimise its production network, not a verdict on Oregon or its workforce.

What makes the decision striking is its timing. Daimler reported its weakest first quarter for truck sales since 2010, but its executives have turned openly optimistic about US and Canadian demand across the back half of 2026 and into 2027, echoing an industry-wide surge in Class 8 orders and a freight market finally tightening after a punishing multi-year downturn. The company is expanding Carolina capacity precisely because it expects more orders, not fewer.

The two facts are not contradictory so much as revealing. A recovery gives a manufacturer the cover to rationalise its footprint, concentrating output in lower-cost Southern plants while an upturn absorbs the disruption. For 387 workers in Portland, the macro rebound offers cold comfort. Their jobs are the price of the optimism.