Orion Bus Industries

Orion International was a North American bus manufacturer based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The company had its main manufacturing plant in Mississauga and sent bus body shells to their plant in Oriskany, New York, for final assembly and testing of vehicles destined for U.S. markets.

The company was founded by Arnold Wollschlaeger in 1974 as Ontario Bus and Truck Incorporated, who introduced the Orion bus to market in 1976. The company was renamed Ontario Bus Industries (OBI) in 1977. It expanded operations to the United States in 1981, founding a wholly owned subsidiary named Bus Industries of America. At its peak OBI employed over 1,200 workers in the Mississauga plant.

After falling into arrears on loans provided by the Government of Ontario the government took over operation of the company in 1994. Subsequently it was sold to Western Star Truck Holdings in 1995, which consolidated the names of OBI and its Bus Industries of America subsidiary to Orion Bus Industries. In 2000, Western Star was purchased by a division of DaimlerChrysler, and in 2006, Orion was absorbed into DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America. DaimlerChrysler continued to market its buses under the "Orion" brand name, and Orion Bus Industries was renamed Orion International in 2009.

In April 2012, Daimler announced the closure of Orion, with bus production halted in 2013.

The company was founded in Mississauga in 1975 as Ontario Bus and Truck, Inc., a private company led by Arnold Wollschlaeger. It was renamed Ontario Bus Industries (OBI) in 1977 and introduced its first prototype bus in 1978, under the model name Orion I. Don Sheardown purchased the company from Wollschlaeger's estate in 1979. A U.S. subsidiary named Bus Industries of America, wholly owned by Ontario Bus Industries, was incorporated in 1981 in Oriskany, New York, to serve the U.S. market. Subsequent models built by OBI or BIA continued to use the "Orion" brand name, with the Orion II being introduced in 1983 as the first low-floor heavy duty bus and the prototype Orion VI, the company's first low-floor bus, being produced in 1993.

At its height in the early 1990s, Ontario Bus Industries employed 1,200 at its Mississauga and Oriskany plants, producing 750 vehicles to 38 transit agencies in the US alone. OBI was taken over by the Ontario Government in 1994 for loan arrears; by that time, the Mississauga plant only had 165 employees. The $81 million investment, which consisted of forgiving $66M in loans and an additional $15M investment, was criticized by Monte Kwinter as "a total disaster". It was sold in 1995 to Western Star Truck Holdings of Kelowna for $35M, which also acquired OBI subsidiary Bus Industries of America, and Western Star adopted a new, single name for both companies, Orion Bus Industries.

In July 2000, parent company Western Star Trucks was acquired by Freightliner, a division of DaimlerChrysler (now Mercedes-Benz Group), and became part of the group Daimler Buses North America. In 2006, Orion Bus Industries became part of the DaimlerChrysler Commercial Buses North America as a subsidiary of Daimler. It continued to market its buses under the "Orion" brand name.

In September 2007, employees representing the United Auto Workers in the Orion plant in Oriskany went on strike for three weeks.