Daimler Truck North America is permanently closing its truck manufacturing plant in Portland, Oregon, eliminating 387 jobs and shifting production to existing company plants in North Carolina and South Carolina. The company confirmed the closure on July 29, 2026, and filed formal notice with the state the same day under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, setting an effective closure date of October 30, 2026, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting and NW Labor Press.

Key Points

• 387 jobs eliminated: 214 Machinists (Local 1005), 101 Teamsters (Local 305), 10 Painters (Local 1094), 9 SEIU (Local 49), and 44 non-union office staff (NW Labor Press)
• WARN notice filed July 29, 2026; plant closes October 30, 2026
• Production moving to Daimler Truck’s existing plants in the Carolinas, including facilities in Mount Holly, North Carolina, and Fort Mill, South Carolina
• Portland remains DTNA’s North American headquarters and engineering hub (OPB)
• Daily output at the Swan Island plant had fallen to 13 trucks a day, down from 24 a few years earlier

Daimler Truck North America framed the closure as part of a broader effort to “optimize its production network and align resources with future business needs,” according to the company’s statement reported by OPB. The Swan Island facility has assembled trucks in Portland since the 1940s, and Daimler has kept its North American headquarters in the city since the early 1980s. That headquarters function, along with a recently opened engineering and testing hub built with a reported $40 million investment, isn’t affected by the closure.

Randy Lill, a representative for Machinists Local 1005, told NW Labor Press that production at the plant had slowed to 13 trucks a day, down from 24 just a few years earlier, with recent parts shortages forcing temporary shutdowns even before the closure was announced. Union members negotiated severance of two weeks of base pay for every year of service through their existing contract, and union leadership met with company management on August 6 and 7 to discuss the wind-down.

The closure reverses plans Daimler announced in 2021 to bring electric truck production, including the eCascadia and eM2 models, back to the Portland plant, per NW Labor Press. Instead, that work is shifting to Daimler Truck’s existing manufacturing network in the Carolinas — the same region where the company says it’s now evaluating sites for a separate, newly announced U.S. manufacturing facility slated to begin construction in late 2026 and start operations around 2029, according to Daimler Truck North America’s own announcement.

Oregon’s manufacturing sector had already lost roughly 4,600 jobs in 2025, and Portland’s broader economy has been slower to recover from the pandemic than many comparable U.S. cities, according to OPB’s reporting on the closure.