history of freightliner trucks
Freightliner Trucks is a well-known American manufacturer of heavy trucks as well as truck chassis and semi-trailer trucks and is now a division of Daimler Trucks North America, which is a subsidiary of German Daimler AG.
Freightliner early years
Freightliner Trucks has been known as Freightliner Inc since 1942, but actually has an earlier history in the 1930s as Consolidated Freightways. Consolidated Freightways began developing its own line of trucks by rebuilding Fageols in an attempt to improve the capabilities of heavy trucks to be able to climb the steep grades of the mountainous regions of the western part of the United States.
These trucks were called “Freightliners”, thus the beginning of the future of the Freightliner Trucks Company. The first trucks were built at the Consolidated Freightways factory in Salt Lake City in 1942, the same year the company became Freightliner.
World War II temporarily halted truck production at Freightliner, but by 1949 it was back in business manufacturing trucks in Portland, Oregon. That first truck ever sold was bought by a fork life manufacturer called Hyster and that vehicle now has a place of honor at the Smithsonian in Washington DC
The company partnered with the White Motor Company in 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio to help it sell trucks because Freightliner lacked a way to distribute its vehicles. The partnership lasted about 25 years and the trucks from that relationship were known as “White Freightliner” trucks.
Freightliner in the hippie years 1960 and 1970
In the early 1960s, Freightliner was looking for ways to cut costs, such as imposing import duty penalties on trucks made in Burnaby, BC. To do this, they opened assembly plants in Indianapolis, Indiana. and in Chino, Calif.
In 1974, Freightliner ended its relationship with the White Motor Company due to that company’s financial problems. Freightliner became an independent truck manufacturer and distributor. Around that time, Freightliner introduced its first traditional truck model, which was an adaptation of what was a high-cab engine model. At the time, these trucks made up 50 percent of the market due to length regulations that limited bumper measurements to the taillight on tractor trailers.
The company continued to prosper, opening new manufacturing plants in Mount Holly, North Carolina and Gastonia, North Carolina in 1979. That year marked another milestone for the trucking industry when President Carter signed new laws that deregulated the rules of both land and air transportation. This deregulation changed the way the trucking industry economy operated and removed protection from the industry from competition, allowing the Teamsters Union to develop a position of strength due to a Master Agreement made with each of the trucking companies. important cargo transportation in the country.
Freightliner in the 1980s Preppie
The 1980s brought the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, which made further changes for the trucking industry by relaxing weight and length rules and establishing a new excise tax on heavy trucks and tires for trucks. It made the overall length of tractor trailers no longer restricted, however the trailer itself was now restricted and could not be more than 53 feet long.
Freightliner had done well during the years when the trucking industry was deregulated, but by 1981 it was having trouble, so the company was sold to Daimler-Benz. It also had to close plants in Chino, California. and Indianapolis, Indiana. However, in 1989, Freightliner was able to purchase an existing plant in Cleveland, North Carolina that had previously manufactured transit buses.
More changes for Freightliner in the booming 1990s
By 1991, Freightliner was doing better and was able to bring out a new series of middleweight trucks that it called “Business Class”. This was the first truck on the market in over 10 years and was very successful.
Freightliners also began manufacturing trucks in Santiago Tianguistenco, Mexico, near Mexico City, at a plant owned by Daimler-Benz. The 1990s ended up being a good era for the trucking industry, and Freightliner flourished as well. At the time, Frieghtliner was headed by James L. Hebe, who had joined the company in 1989.
Several notable products produced in the 1990s included what became the Freightliner Custom Chassis, which was made for pickup trucks used by companies such as UPS and Cintas, as well as school buses, diesel RVs, and shuttle buses in 1995, and in 1997 a heavyweight truck called the “AeroMax” was acquired from the Ford Motor Company and Freightliner renamed the truck series “Sterling”.
Freightliner The Modern Era
In 2000, Freightliner acquired what used to be Detroit Diesel Corp., which has been a subsidiary of General Motors. Daimler later integrated Detroit Diesel into Freightliner, making the company even bigger. Unfortunately, you may have taken on more trucks than you could handle right now, and by the following year, you had a lot more trucks than were in demand. The company was having financial problems, so its former CFO, Rainer Schmueckle, was brought in to help get the company back on track.
Over the next two years, several plants were closed or consolidated in the hope that Freightliner would go back into the black. In 2007, it ran into other troubles when workers at the Cleveland, North Carolina plant called a strike and 700 employees were fired as a result. Most were rehired a week later. That same year, the company had to lay off 800 workers in Portland, Oregon when moving that plant to Mexico, and on January 1, 2011. On January 7, 2008, the company became known as Daimler Trucks North America.
freightliner today
These days, Freightliner Trucks is as active as ever making heavy-duty trucks in the class five through eight series in North America, and leads the Class A diesel RV and walk-in van chassis markets. Freightliner is also responsible for a class 2 van called the Sprinter that is marketed through Freightliner for Mercedes-Benz in Europe.
As of January 2012, Freightliner had plans to hire an additional 1,100 workers for its Cleveland, North Carolina plant, to add to the 1,500 workers it already has there. This is a temporary measure due to increased demand for Cascadia trucks. Freightliner continues to be popular within the industry for building some of the most durable and reliable heavy-duty trucks on the road today.