Freightliner LLC celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Mount Holly Truck Manufacturing Plant last weekend with festive ceremonies at the North Carolina facility.

The plant opened in May 1979 and was originally designed to build heavy-duty Freightliner trucks for over-the-road applications. It is now the home of Freightliner Trucks' Business Class M2 line of medium-duty and vocational trucks.
"Freightliner LLC is celebrating a quarter-century of manufacturing excellence at our Mount Holly plant," said Rainer Schmueckle, president and CEO of Freightliner LLC, which is based in Portland, Oregon. The plant has exclusively built the Freightliner Business Class M2 line of medium-duty and vocational trucks since 2002. Before that, it produced the original Business Class product, introduced in 1991. Earlier, Mount Holly built a mix of heavy-duty Freightliners.
The Business Class M2 line features Class 5-8 models in three BBC (bumper-to-back-of-cab) dimensions, including 100-, 106- and 112-inch BBC models. Also offered are extended cabs and crew cabs. Each vehicle can be customized for a broad range of vocational and commercial truck requirements.
After more than 25 years as a West Coast-based truck manufacturer, Freightliner expanded its operations to the Southeast in the late 1970s because of the large number of customers located east of the Mississippi River. Construction began in 1978 at both Mount Holly and nearby Gastonia, N.C., site of the Gastonia Parts Manufacturing Plant, which was built to supply Mount Holly with truck parts.
The Mount Holly plant opened for business in May 1979 with 134 full-time employees. It produced its first truck, a 1980 Freightliner COE, that month for Goldston Inc., of Eden, N.C. With 460,000 square feet of floor space, the Mount Holly plant was Freightliner's largest at the time. Today the plant employs more than 1,100 people. Mount Holly production employees are members of the UAW.
Expanded and modernized several times, the Mount Holly Truck Plant now has 616,000 square feet of space after a major renovation in 2001 and 2002. The 14-month remodel updated more than 80% of the floor space and prepared the plant for manufacturing the Business Class M2 product line. The facility incorporates high-tech manufacturing equipment, including robots for welding and painting, automated conveyor systems and sophisticated automated wash and paint centers.
Freightliner produces and markets Class 3-8 vehicles under the Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star, American LaFrance and Thomas Built Buses nameplates. Freightliner is a company of DaimlerChrysler.