Navistar Closing Garland Plant, 900 Employees Out of Work

Production Has Ended at Navistar, Only A Few People Closing Down

In a matter of weeks, a Garland plant that employed 900 people will close its doors for good.

Production has officially stopped at Garland location of the Navistar International Corporation. The entire operation will shut down in May 31, putting 900 people out of work. So far, only a small workforce remains on the job to shut down the plant.

Navistar’s Garland location is an assembly plant that also manufactures service trucks.

After 15 years in Garland, the trucking company said they decided to consolidate and move production to Ohio and Mexico. The company said they would be cutting costs by millions of dollars by shutting down the Garland plant.

"It seems like the curse of death whenever I'm going to work for somebody because of the circumstances and that's just the way its' worked out," said Navistar worker Jeff Houghton who will be without a job on Friday. Houghton says he has witnessed company shutdowns three times in the last 15 years of his life.

"People are disgruntled about it," said Ryan Goss, "But they've given us a pretty good time frame in which to plan, a lot of us want to go back to school, find other jobs."

The Garland Chamber of Commerce is working with Texas Workforce Solutions, trying to help those who will be out of work. They recently hosted a job fair for 400 production workers and 15 area companies.

"It's a function of "what do want to do?," said Paul Mayer, CEO of the Garland Chamber of Commerce. "If you want to go to work, and you're motivated, and there are jobs for you, we have to do a better job of marketing the available jobs."

No word on who will take over the Navistar building, but city officials tell NBC 5 a high profile broker is aggressively trying to find new buyers.

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