Who builds trucks in Europe

There are more truck badges on a European motorway than there are companies behind them. Six industrial groups stand behind the brands on this page, and one of the six is the subject of a takeover offer. Knowing which badge belongs to which group tells you who owns the brand, where its trucks are built and which parts of the driveline the group makes itself.

The six groups

Daimler Truck lists six brands: Mercedes-Benz, Setra, Freightliner, Western Star, BharatBenz and Thomas Built Buses, BharatBenz being aimed specifically at the Indian market. In Europe its trucks are Mercedes-Benz, and Setra is among its bus brands. Around 100,000 employees across 35 main locations.

TRATON GROUP began as Volkswagen Truck & Bus, which Volkswagen AG created in 2015 to bundle MAN, Scania and Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus, and took its present name in 2018. It holds four brands: Scania, MAN, International, which serves North and South America, and Volkswagen Truck & Bus, present in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Sales revenue of €44.1 billion in 2025, more than 107,000 employees, 26 major production sites. Scania and MAN share a parent and, in places, engineering: MAN says its D30 engine was “developed with the combined expertise of the TRATON Group”, and its Salzgitter plant makes “essential individual parts for non-driven axles and axle assembly for all MAN and Scania vehicle plants in Europe”. The Scania S-series and the MAN TGX each have their own page.

Volvo Group owns Volvo Trucks, Renault Trucks and Mack Trucks, with factories in 17 countries. It lists Blainville, in France, as a plant of both Volvo Trucks and Renault Trucks, and its engines and transmissions come from its own works, set out below. Renault Trucks’ T range is covered in Renault Trucks T.

PACCAR is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, and builds trucks under the Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF nameplates; DAF is the one it builds for sale throughout Western and Eastern Europe. DAF builds in Eindhoven, Westerlo and Leyland, with further plants in Brazil, Australia and Taiwan, behind a network of 1,100 independent dealer locations.

Iveco Group now has five brands: IVECO for heavy, medium and light trucks, FPT for powertrains, IVECO BUS and HEULIEZ for buses and coaches, and IVECO CAPITAL for finance. It employs 33,000 people and operates 16 industrial sites. Its defence business, the IDV and ASTRA brands, passed to Leonardo on 18 March 2026. The engine brand supplies the truck brand: the MY2024 tables for the off-road T-Way list two FPT engines, the Cursor 9 and the XCursor 13.

Ford Otosan is a publicly traded company in which Ford Motor Company and Koç Holding each own 41%. It designs, engineers and builds Ford Trucks, which it calls Ford’s only heavy commercial vehicle brand, and appoints distributors and dealers abroad; the long-haul tractor in the range is the F-MAX. Ford Trucks’ all-electric truck is the F-LINE E.

Where the vehicles are physically built

Mercedes-Benz truck assembly centres on Wörth am Rhein, which Daimler Truck calls the lead and largest volume plant in the Mercedes-Benz Trucks European production network, with annual production “in the mid- to high-five-digit range, depending on market conditions”. It builds the Actros, Arocs and Atego series; in December 2024 Daimler Truck reported that the first customer Actros L had come off its line. Aksaray in Türkiye is “a major production site for Actros and Arocs models”.

MAN builds the TGS and TGX at Munich, where “both modern diesel trucks and the electrically powered trucks come off the production line”, while Kraków covers the entire truck portfolio with a capacity of more than 200 vehicles a day in three-shift operation. Engines and batteries come from Nuremberg; Salzgitter is a component plant for axle parts and crankshafts; Starachowice in Poland builds city buses and bus chassis, and Ankara in Türkiye, MAN’s largest bus production centre, builds city, coach and intercity buses.

Scania makes all the cabs for its European production at Oskarshamn, a plant of 2,700 people. At Södertälje Scania manufactures engines, axles, gearboxes and chassis.

Volvo Group lists Gothenburg and Ghent as Volvo Trucks plants in Europe, with cabs from Umeå; Renault Trucks come from Bourg-en-Bresse and Blainville, and Blainville is listed for Volvo Trucks too. Engines and transmissions come from Skövde and Köping in Sweden and Vénissieux in France.

IVECO’s Madrid plant, which IVECO calls Spain’s only production site for heavy-duty industrial vehicles, builds the entire heavy range, taking cabs from Valladolid already welded and painted. Its more than 2,700 employees handle nearly 40,000 possible configurations across 267 base models, and the same configuration is produced, on average, only three times a year.

Ford Otosan’s Eskişehir plant is, by Ford Otosan’s account, the only plant in Turkey to manufacture vehicle, diesel engine and powertrains in the same facility: Ford Trucks tractors, road and construction ranges alongside Ecotorq truck engines, with 2025 capacity of 22,500 truck and tractor units.

The map is moving

In March 2026 Mercedes-Benz Trucks announced plans for a new vehicle assembly and manufacturing site at Cheb in the Czech Republic, subject to pending approvals, with a planned annual capacity of around 25,000 units, more than 1,000 jobs expected and ramp-up targeted for the end of the decade. Cheb is to take over part of today’s production programme from Wörth and Aksaray, with painted cab bodies supplied from Wörth. Daimler Truck will invest more than €2 billion in its German production sites by 2030, around half of it at Wörth, and Aksaray in Türkiye stays in the network with an adjusted programme. The stated reason is “increasing complexity caused by a growing variety of product variants”.

The map also gains entries from outside these six groups, and a brand arriving that way faces approval, tariff and service questions of its own.

MAN is expanding in Poland. A memorandum of understanding signed with the Polish government in July 2026 covers investments of around €1.2 billion, and Kraków becomes MAN’s second electrified truck production site after Munich: MAN said the eTGL would be produced entirely there from mid-July 2026, and names the medium-duty eTGM for the site as well. Once the expansion projects are complete, the production area will roughly double, from 130,000 to 270,000 square metres.

And Iveco Group may be about to change hands. Tata Motors agreed in July 2025 to acquire it at €14.1 per share (cum dividend, excluding any dividend distributed in relation to the sale of the defence business), approximately €3.8 billion excluding the defence business and the net proceeds from its separation. The defence business has since gone to Leonardo, and on 22 April 2026 Iveco Group paid an extraordinary interim dividend of about €1,550 million from the proceeds of that sale. Tata Motors launched the tender offer on 4 September 2026, with an acceptance period running to 26 October 2026; payment “will only take place if the Offer is completed”. The launch release summarises the non-financial covenants set out in full in the offer document: headquarters remaining in Turin; the offeror “shall not implement any material restructurings or close any plants or factories owned or used by Iveco Group as a direct consequence of the combination and, in any case, during the period” of the covenants, which run for two years after the payment date of the offer; and it “does not envisage any reduction of the workforce of Iveco Group as a direct consequence of the combination”.

Where the engines, gearboxes and axles come from

Each group’s own documents say which parts of the driveline it makes itself.

Daimler Truck’s Mannheim plant produces “engines and related components for commercial vehicles”, Gaggenau “specializes in transmissions for heavy-duty commercial vehicles” and Kassel manufactures axles for trucks, buses, vans and passenger cars. Scania makes engines, axles and gearboxes at Södertälje, and Volvo Group’s European engine and transmission plants are Skövde and Köping in Sweden and Vénissieux in France.

DAF’s own facilities produce engines, cabs, axles and chassis, Westerlo being its axle and cab factory; gearboxes are not on DAF’s list. DAF UK says New Generation DAF trucks “have TraXon automated gearboxes fitted as standard”, and its specification sheets for the XG+ list a 12-speed TraXon. MAN’s engines come from Nuremberg, and Munich produces “driven axles, transfer cases and transmissions for the entire plant network”. The T-Way’s engines come from FPT, an Iveco Group brand in its own right, and Ford Otosan builds Ecotorq truck engines and powertrains at Eskişehir beside the trucks themselves.

What a component supplier may put its own trade mark on, and what a manufacturer may require of its authorised repairers, is a question for the motor vehicle block exemption — see genuine, OE and aftermarket parts.