Daimler Trucks North America, formerly known as Freightliner LLC, will lay off over 2,000 workers in a little over two months, the company said Thursday.

Most of the job losses are at the company's plants near Charlotte, North Carolina. At their busiest, the three Charlotte-area plants employed 6,000. The job cuts in the state will occur 13 March.

Nearly 1,300 employees at the Freightliner plant in Cleveland will be laid off - about three quarters of it's workforce - leaving about 700 jobs.

The Mount Holly facility will cut 600 workers and almost completely shut down. Company officials said it would perform limited component assembly work after March. About 275 workers will lose their jobs at a parts plant in Gastonia. Freightliner already had cut more than 550 jobs at the plant in October.

"People knew layoffs were coming, but I don't think anyone expected them to be this deep," said United Auto Workers union local president George Drexel.

Daimler Trucks CEO Chris Patterson said the cuts were hard to avoid amid the economic downturn. "Although these actions are unavoidable and necessary, we deeply regret the impact on our employees and their families," Patterson said in a statement Thursday, adding that the company looks forward to production resuming.