Peterbilt's Airport Road plant has hired more than 1,000 people this year as truck orders surge

Peterbilt's truck plant in Denton has added more than 1,000 employees since January, its parent company, Paccar, confirmed to the trade publication Transport Topics in a report published Friday.

The company did not say how many of the new hires work on the production line, and Transport Topics reported that the hiring is still going on.

"Paccar has a proud history of building trucks in America for America, and we support a strong U.S. manufacturing base," Peterbilt general manager Jake Montero told the publication in an email.

Work moved to Denton

Transport Topics gave two reasons for the larger workforce. One is demand: truck orders through the first nine months of 2026 ran 95% above the same stretch of 2025, according to FTR Transportation Intelligence data the publication cited.

The other is production that Paccar shifted to Denton. The company moved its Class 8 low-cab refuse trucks to the plant from Mexico, and it moved medium-duty truck production out of its Sainte-Thérèse plant in Quebec to Denton and to its plant in Chillicothe, Ohio. The Quebec plant went through three rounds of layoffs between December 2024 and October 2025, the publication reported.

Other truck makers are also hiring again after cutting jobs in 2025. Daimler Truck North America plans to bring back 600 workers at a North Carolina plant by the end of this year, according to the report.

How big the plant is

Transport Topics described Denton as Peterbilt's largest truck manufacturing plant. It opened in August 1980 with 81 employees on 80 acres, and by 2020 it covered 238 acres and employed more than 2,500 people, according to a company statement the publication cited.

A city staff report prepared for the Economic Development Partnership Board's Oct. 14 meeting put the plant's current workforce at about 1,900 full-time employees and called Paccar the city's largest private employer. The report counts full-time workers only; Transport Topics did not say whether its hiring figure includes part-time or temporary staff, and neither source reconciles the two numbers.

That report backed a request for the city to nominate Paccar for the state's Texas Enterprise Zone program, which lets approved companies seek state sales and use tax refunds.

It describes about $59 million in planned spending at the plant at 3200 Airport Road: roughly $34 million in 2028 and 2029 for a new manufacturing cell for the Model 520 truck, which would let more of that truck be built in Denton instead of Mexico, and about $25 million through 2031 to expand existing product lines.

The staff report says those projects are not expected to add jobs and that the company expects to keep its existing employment level.

Paccar is aiming for 35% of the North American heavy-duty truck market, a company executive told analysts at a February event held at the Denton plant, Transport Topics reported.

Sources

ttnews.com

denton-tx.legistar.com