Nearly 1,400 laid off at former Navistar truck plant in Springfield, Ohio

Nearly 1,400 workers were laid off Sept. 30 from what had been the Navistar truck factory in Springfield, Ohio — enough to basically erase a full year of job growth in the greater Dayton area, according to TheTrucker.com on Oct. 3.

The layoffs came three days before President Donald Trump’s Oct. 3 rally at a nearby high school. The plant’s former owner, International Motors, chose to offload the facility, and a Canadian armored-vehicle maker, Roshel, is buying it. Roshel said in a statement that it is “working with everyone involved not only to protect the current workforce, but to more than double it over the coming years through a phased process” — and laid-off workers expect to be rehired within 6 to 12 months.

The Dayton area has shed about half of its 90,000 factory jobs since 1990, according to federal data. The plant was once a pillar of the region’s manufacturing base, and its closure lands as laid-off workers face an inflation squeeze — one worker described five grocery items costing as much as a full cart once did.