Great Dane to Sell Company-Owned Dealerships

Great Dane expects to complete the sale of all 19 locations by the end of the year. (Great Dane)

Trailer manufacturer Great Dane will sell all 19 company-owned dealership locations, a senior executive confirmed.

The sale comes as Great Dane continues to search for a permanent chief executive and follows layoffs at manufacturing plants in what has been a tough sales environment for trailer manufacturers amid the lengthy freight market downturn.

Chicago-based Great Dane expects to complete the sale by the end of 2026, Chris Hammond, executive vice president of industry affairs and strategic accounts, said in a May 20 email.

Performance Brokerage Services said May 18 it had been selected to carry out the sale of the dealerships, noting that the locations were expected to become part of a more agile locally driven retail model.

“Great Dane is leaning into a two-channel sales strategy and is excited about moving forward [and] creating new dealer partnerships while expanding existing ones as well. This is part of our focused distribution strategy for the future. As part of that strategy, we will not own any retail dealer locations,” Hammond told TT.

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Mullinix 

A week before the sale was announced, Great Dane appointed Mel Cohen interim CEO. Cohen is a long-tenured member of the company’s board of advisers.

The company’s search for a permanent CEO continues, Great Dane said. That individual, when appointed, will replace Rick Mullininx as top executive.

Great Dane announced in September 2025 that Mullininx, the company’s president and chief operating officer, would retire Dec. 31, 2026. Currently, Mullininx remains in that role.

In the intervening period, however, Great Dane has undertaken a series of layoffs at manufacturing plants as trailer sales and orders plummeted in 2025.

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(FTR Transportation Intelligence)

A total of 164 employees including assemblers and welders were laid off at Great Dane’s Elysburg, Pa., facility in February, according to a state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification issued in December.

An additional 150 Kewanee, Ill., employees were laid off in November, and a similar number of jobs were cut at the company’s Danville, Pa., plant in January, state filings show.

The layoffs came as trailer orders dropped as low as 5,780 in May 2025 compared with 24,917 in January 2025, according to FTR Transportation Intelligence data.

Trailer orders only topped 15,000 again for the first time in seven months in October 2025, when the total came in at 15,892, the data shows. Since the start of 2026, monthly order totals have vacillated between 13,305 and 24,069.

Carriers typically invest in tractors and trucks before they add trailers to their rolling stock assets during a downturn or when an upcycle begins, and there are additional near-term headwinds for trailer manufacturers too.

“Cost and policy risks remain key overhangs and may already be shaping demand patterns,” Dan Moyer, FTR senior analyst for commercial vehicles, noted in his most recent public comments.

“A change in how the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs are applied adds pricing and sourcing volatility for trailer equipment with significant metals exposure, and a van trailer antidumping and countervailing duties investigation adds further uncertainty,” he added.

The coalition of U.S.-based manufacturers in November asked federal agencies to impose duties on dry van and refrigerated trailers imported from Mexico, Canada and China.

Great Dane is part of the American Trailer Manufacturers Coalition — alongside trailer majors Stoughton Trailers and Wabash — that wants to raise the price of its peers’ products.

Some 11 manufacturers with Mexican operations could be affected by the duties, including affiliates of trailer majors Fruehauf, Hyundai Translead and Utility Trailer Manufacturing.