Daimler Trucks North America announced that it will build a new headquarters building and parking garage on its Swan Island campus in Portland, Ore. On top of that, a new Daimler Education in Motion program benefits Portland metro area and Southwest Washington schools with more than $330,000 in donations and mentoring programs geared toward career development in engineering and manufacturing.

The new 265,000-square-foot corporate headquarters building will serve two distinct functions: to merge DTNA employees currently located in offices separated by the Willamette River, and to accommodate approximately 400 new positions in Portland that the company anticipates it will need in conjunction with future business growth.

The total project requires a $150,000,000 investment by DTNA and is expected to be completed in 2016.

DTNA's goal is for the new facility to achieve LEED Platinum Certification, the most prestigious environmentally friendly building certification available through the U.S. Green Building Council.

Daimler Education in Motion Campaign

Daimler’s Education in Motion will benefit programs in 34 Portland metro area and Southwest Washington schools. Two of the campaign’s more significant initiatives are Pathways to Manufacturing and the Daimler Educational Outreach program. Today, the company announced donations totaling close to $330,000 to help support these two programs.

Along with Vigor Industrial, DTNA is a founding sponsor of IMPACT NW’s Pathways to Manufacturing program. The company’s partnership will create, launch, and implement training programs for high school students interested in a career path in manufacturing.

In 2013, Pathways to Manufacturing introduced a manufacturing career path to more than a dozen students from Centennial High School in Gresham, Ore., and Franklin High School in Portland, providing them with professional soft-skills training, informational site visits, and mentored internships.

DTNA’s History in Portland

The company's history in Portland goes back 70 years. In the 1940s, Leland James began manufacturing trucks in Portland as the Freightliner Corp. In 1981, Daimler-Benz AG (now Daimler AG) bought Freightliner Trucks from Consolidated Freightways, and in the following decade, vehicle sales more than doubled.

Today, DTNA is North America’s leading manufacturer of commercial vehicles, selling approximately 140,000 commercial vehicles annually, including significant export sales worldwide. It manufactures, sells, and services commercial vehicles under the Freightliner, Western Star, Detroit, and Thomas Built Buses nameplates.