Daimler Truck to cut 5,000 jobs in Germany by 2030 as sales soften

# Daimler Truck to cut 5,000 jobs in Germany by 2030 as sales soften

The commercial vehicle maker says the cuts are part of a broader cost program aimed at saving more than €1 billion a year by 2030.

Event date: 2025-07-08.

Daimler Truck said it plans to eliminate around 5,000 jobs in Germany by 2030 as it tries to bring costs down after weaker sales, especially in the United States. The move is part of a wider restructuring effort inside the company’s European truck business and comes a day after the group reported a 5% drop in second-quarter sales.

The company said the savings program, called Cost Down Europe, is designed to improve profitability and make Mercedes-Benz Trucks more resilient in a tougher market. Daimler Truck said it wants to reduce recurring costs by more than €1 billion by the end of the decade. Those savings are expected to come from personnel, materials, administration, IT infrastructure and research and development.

According to the company, the job cuts will be concentrated in Germany, where it has about 35,500 employees across five sites: Gaggenau, Kassel, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Wörth. Stuttgart is the group’s hub and employed about 28,000 people at the end of 2024. A spokesperson said most of the reduction should come through natural attrition and early retirement, although targeted severance programs remain possible.

The announcement follows an agreement reached in May with the central works council on key points for the company’s German truck sites. That deal includes a socially responsible workforce reduction and a commitment to avoid compulsory redundancies until the end of 2034. In other words, the company is signaling a long runway for change rather than an abrupt round of layoffs.

Daimler Truck’s sales figures underline why management is moving now. The group sold 106,715 trucks and buses in the second quarter, down from 112,195 a year earlier. The company said results were particularly weak in the US market, which is an important signal for a manufacturer trying to defend margins across multiple regions at once.

The restructuring is also part of a broader effort to sharpen the performance of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, the brand Daimler Truck kept after the 2021 spin-off from Daimler AG. The company said the business needs to become more market resilient and deliver better profitability in Europe.

The cutbacks do not appear to be a one-off response to a single weak quarter. Instead, Daimler Truck is tying them to a longer-term operating reset, with the central objective of lowering structural costs before 2030. For investors and employees alike, the message is that the company sees a persistent pressure on earnings rather than a temporary dip.

The question now is how smoothly the company can implement the reductions while honoring its labor agreement and maintaining production across its German truck network. Much of the adjustment will depend on whether retirements, departures and internal changes are enough to achieve the target without deeper disruption at the plants.