Updated:
4/13/2009 2:00:00 AM Buy a Digital Copy of Transport Topics
Sterling Truck Corp. Closes After 11 Years
Ontario Plant Produced 257,300 Vehicles
By Frederick Kiel, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the April 13 print edition of Transport Topics.
Sterling Truck Corp. officially ended its 11-year life span last month when the last Class 8 rolled off the St. Thomas, Ontario, assembly line, part of a final order for ABF Freight System Inc.
Parent firm Daimler AG declined requests last week from Transport Topics to discuss Sterling. But Dave Elliot, president of the Canadian Auto Workers, Local 1001, which represented workers at the plant, said the final new truck, of 257,300 produced, was completed on March 4.
“Daimler began moving out most of the equipment after that and will auction off whatever remains,” Elliot said.
He said about 18 employees will remain at the 485,000-square-foot plant until May 1 to assist in the cleanup effort.
Freightliner Corp., then the North American main subsidiary of what was then Daimler-Benz, announced in February 1997 that it had bought the heavy-duty division of Ford Motor Co., TT reported at the time. It did not give the price, but news reports put it between $200 million and $300 million.
The acquisition gave industry-leader Freightliner nearly 40% of the U.S. Class 8 market, if it held onto Ford’s total share, TT reported at the time.
Sterling Truck Corp. unveiled its product line at a press conference Jan. 29, 1998, claiming it would someday dominate the heavy endof the vocational market, TT reported
at the time. Freightliner said it invested $30 million in its St. Thomas plant to prepare for Sterling production.
Ford sold 12,645 Class 8 trucks in 1997, for 7.1% of the heavy-duty U.S. market that year.
In 2008, Sterling sold 7,477 Class 8 trucks, for 5.6% of the total market, down from 8% in 2007, WardsAuto.com said. The company also sold 1,822 Class 7s, 675 Class 6s, and 2,004 Classes 3-5 units during 2008.
Andreas Renschler, head of Daimler AG’s global truck group, announced in October that Sterling, which had specialized in building heavy-duty and medium-duty vocational vehicles, would be phased out because of “a fundamental change in market” in North America (10-20, click here for previous story).
“We didn’t order a single Sterling after that announcement,” Don Freeman, general manager of ATC Freightliner, Sterling and Western
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