As its officials predict no recovery in the North American truck market until at least 2003, Freightliner is preparing to unveil a new restructuring plan.

According to published reports, the restructuring plan is scheduled to be unveiled Oct. 20. Eckhard Cordes, responsible for DaimlerChrysler's commercial vehicle operations (including Freightliner), indicated that more job cuts were unlikely. The company already has cut almost half of its blue-collar workforce, and 40 percent of white-collar jobs.
Cordes said the plan is based on the assumption that there will be no recovery in 2002. According to Bloomberg, DaimlerChrysler predicts that U.S. industrywide sales will probably fall to 155,000 heavy trucks this year from about 300,000 two years ago.
Cordes has high expectations for the turnaround plan, saying at an event in Stuttgart, Germany, "Something disastrous would have to happen for us not to succeed in making Freightliner a leader not only in market share but also in earnings."
However, he emphasized that the focus for the future would be on profitability, rather than market share. Some industry observers believe that Freightliner's emphasis on building market share over the past few years, including a guaranteed buyback policy for large fleet owners, contributed not only to its financial troubles but to the truck sales slump and used truck glut as a whole.