An Ohio Truck Plant Laid Off 1,341 Workers Days Before Trump's Rally Nearby

The former Navistar plant is being sold to Roshel, an armored-vehicle maker, and some laid-off workers are now knocking doors for Democrats.

More than 1,300 workers were laid off on Sept. 30 at the old Navistar truck plant in Springfield, Ohio, three days before President Trump's rally nearby.

One of them, Kyle Bos, 30, has voted for Trump three times. He's a United Auto Workers member with two daughters and a third due in January. Now he plans to spend the last weeks of the midterm campaign knocking on doors for Democrats, the Associated Press reported in a story published by PBS News.

The layoffs had been on paper since summer. The plant's owner, International Motors, filed a WARN layoff notice with the state covering 1,341 employees at two Springfield plants, the Dayton Daily News reported, after agreeing to sell the operation to Roshel, a Canadian company that builds armored vehicles. Spectrum News covered that notice on July 30 and said the sale was expected to close on Oct. 2. The deal itself had been public since April, Work Truck Online reported.

Two months of warning didn't make the hit smaller. The AP reported the cuts are big enough to wipe out about a year's worth of job gains across the Dayton region. That region has kept only about half of the 90,000 factory jobs it had in 1990, federal figures cited by the AP show.

Trump came to the area with a Senate seat on the line. Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican, is defending it against Sherrod Brown, the Democrat who lost it two years ago and wants it back. The president says the Ohio stop is part of a 32-day rally tour meant to persuade voters that the economy is in better shape than they believe.

He made that pitch two days before the Ohio rally, at a truck plant in Texas, where he said factories were going up all over the country. "The only thing we're doing badly at is public relations," Trump said, as quoted by the AP.

The White House pointed instead to other companies' plans in Ohio: an $850 million investment by Electra, an aircraft maker, plus announcements from Honda and Stellantis. It also credited Trump's tax cuts and trade deals with helping the state. Phil Plummer, the Montgomery County Republican chairman and a candidate for the Ohio Senate, said Trump is the glue holding the party's alliance of businesses and working families together.

On the plant floor, those policies looked thinner. The AP argues Trump's tariffs didn't lift demand for trucks, and the One Big Beautiful Bill's break on overtime pay only helps workers who get overtime. Marianne Donnelly, a forklift driver at the plant, said there wasn't much to tax. "We weren't getting a lot of overtime because of the economy," she told the AP. She's been buying discounted meat to freeze and has dropped newspaper subscriptions and some streaming services.

Trump has also promised $5,000 checks if Republicans hold the House and Senate in November. Bos took that personally. "It feels like a bribe, a slap in the face, and, like, that we're all ignorant," he told the AP.

His break with the president goes further than one promise. "Something has to change politically in this country," said Bos, who calls himself a centrist.

The way back runs through Roshel. The company said in a statement that it's working to protect the existing workforce and to more than double it in phases over the coming years. Laid-off workers like Donnelly told the AP they expect to be hired back within six to 12 months. Even the short end of that window opens well after the November election.

Source: pbs.org, retrieved October 4, 2026. Other sources: daytondailynews.com, spectrumnews1.com, worktruckonline.com.