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Industry NewsShifting To A Higher GearJanuary 12, 2012 Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) announced the addition of a second shift and plans to ramp up production at its Freightliner Truck Manufacturing Plant in Cleveland, N.C., creating more than 1100 new jobs by the end of 2012. The additional workers represent a 72% increase in personnel at the plant and will include approximately 1072 shop employees and an additional 29 engineering and support positions to facilitate increased production, the company said. According to Daimler, a majority of the positions will be filled with recalled workers who were laid off in 2009. The ramp-up is expected to nearly double the daily production rates at the Cleveland plant by October 2012. The increase in production capacity and hiring comes in response to demand growth which has created backorders as long as six months for the Freightliner Cascadia model, Daimler Trucks said. The Cleveland plant is the largest Freightliner Trucks manufacturing plant in the United States, producing Class 8 on-highway trucks, including the Cascadia, Columbia and Argosy product lines. Freightliner trucks also are sold internationally, with nearly 20% of the trucks built at the Cleveland plant sold through Daimler subsidiaries in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In conjunction with the ramp-up at the Cleveland plant, DTNA also will hire 100 employees at its nearby Components and Logistics Plant in Gastonia, N.C. The 90 new hourly employees in the factory and 10 salaried and hourly office employees primarily will staff a second and third shift. Hiring of new employees will begin in early February and the new production shift is slated to be at full capacity by September 2012.
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