Daimler Truck and eStar Truck and Van have announced that Daimler Truck's Own Retail division has acquired eStar, effective 1 May 2026, marking its first company-owned sales and service presence in the UK; financial terms were not disclosed. It matters because it gives Daimler Truck direct control of aftersales capacity in one of Europe's largest truck and van markets, rather than relying solely on independent dealers for service resilience.

Daimler Truck is a Leinfelden-Echterdingen-headquartered commercial vehicle manufacturer with 35 main locations globally and around 100,000 employees, producing trucks and buses under the Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Western Star and BharatBenz brands.

eStar Truck and Van is a Knowsley-based Mercedes-Benz and FUSO dealer group operating six sites across Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Stoke-on-Trent and Deeside, employing more than 300 staff who transition into the Daimler Truck organisation under the deal.

The acquisition expands Daimler Truck's Own Retail network to 45 company-owned locations across eight European markets, supporting a target of growing that network by more than 60 per cent by 2030.

Stina Fagerman, president of Mercedes-Benz Trucks Region Europe, said: "In the United Kingdom, where we previously had no presence with own sales and service locations, our recent acquisition of six locations has put us in an excellent position almost instantly."

She added that investments like the UK deal would help increase the service share and thus the resilience of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, framing aftersales capacity itself as an operational safeguard rather than a revenue line alone.

Volker Hüntrup, head of Mercedes-Benz Trucks Own Retail Europe, said the new sites sit in a strategically important region at the heart of the industrial and logistics hub of Northern England and Wales, with strong connectivity to major motorways, Manchester Airport and the Manchester Ship Canal.

The deal follows recent Own Retail acquisitions in Passau, Trappes near Paris and Stránčice near Prague, extending a consistent pattern of direct ownership entering markets through single dealer group acquisitions rather than greenfield builds.

For the sector, the move signals that OEMs are treating direct control of service capacity, not just sales volume, as the metric that determines long-term customer retention in commercial vehicle markets.

Source: Daimler Truck AG