Thomas Built Buses Saf-T-Liner Hdx2, model year 2027. Filed by Daimler Trucks North America, LLC and reported to NHTSA on 12 June 2026. 2 vehicles potentially affected.
What the notice says Daimler Trucks North America, LLC (DTNA) is recalling certain 2027 Thomas Built SAF-T-LINER HDX2 school buses. Front and mid-body interior joints may have been manufactured incorrectly, resulting in insufficient joint strength. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle …
Is your vehicle included? Check with your VIN at NHTSA, or ask a dealer. This page is an independent copy of the notice, kept so you can see what changed after it was published. It is not the authority, and the authority’s own text is the one to act on.
Thomas Built Buses's own number for this recall: F1034. That is the number on the owner letter and on the dealer paperwork. 26V388 is the number NHTSA gave the same campaign, and the number this page is filed under. They are one recall, written two ways.
What owners ask about this recall
- Which vehicles does recall 26V388 cover?
- Thomas Built Buses Saf-T-Liner HDX2, model year 2027.
- What is wrong with them?
- Daimler Trucks North America, LLC (DTNA) is recalling certain 2027 Thomas Built SAF-T-LINER HDX2 school buses. Front and mid-body interior joints may have been manufactured incorrectly, resulting in insufficient joint strength.
- What can happen if it is not put right?
- A school bus with insufficient joint strength may not adequately protect passengers in a crash, increasing the risk of injury.
- Is there a fix yet?
- Not yet, on the wording NHTSA publishes today. Dealers will add fasteners to secure the joints, free of charge. Interim notification letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, are expected to be mailed July 2, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the final remedy is available, anticipated in August 2026.
- What should I do now?
- Check your own vehicle by its VIN with NHTSA, which is the record to act on. Thomas Built Buses calls this recall F1034, which is the number on the owner letter and the dealer paperwork.
Answered from the register this site holds. NHTSA is the record to act on.
What the authority says can happen if this is not fixed: “A school bus with insufficient joint strength may not adequately protect passengers in a crash, increasing the risk of injury.”
affected
in the notice
caught
| Campaign | 26V388 |
|---|---|
| Filed by | Daimler Trucks North America, LLC |
| System at fault | Structure:Body |
| Reported to NHTSA | 12 June 2026 |
| Model years | 2027-2027 |
| Vehicles named | THOMAS BUILT BUSES SAF-T-LINER HDX2 |
What the notice says today
The defect
Daimler Trucks North America, LLC (DTNA) is recalling certain 2027 Thomas Built SAF-T-LINER HDX2 school buses. Front and mid-body interior joints may have been manufactured incorrectly, resulting in insufficient joint strength. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 221, "School Bus Body Joint Strength."
The consequence
A school bus with insufficient joint strength may not adequately protect passengers in a crash, increasing the risk of injury.
The remedy
Dealers will add fasteners to secure the joints, free of charge. Interim notification letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, are expected to be mailed July 2, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the final remedy is available, anticipated in August 2026. Owners may contact DTNA customer service at 1-800-574-0712. DTNA's number for this recall is F1034.
What it said before
Nothing has changed while we have been watching. We last read the wording of this campaign on 17 September 2026, and it matched the copy we already held.
That copy hashes to 48ecd8483733c4edb95a10e1645f5b32…, so if it is ever edited the change is provable rather than a matter of memory.
This is one of 901 notices in the record whose component field names structure. Across that group the median wait before owners were written to was 42 days.
Last checked . No change has been recorded in the wording.
The models named here, across their whole recall history
How to cite this record
Quoting the wording on this page means quoting a version, so the date belongs in the citation:
CarsMultiverse, recall 26V388, wording as read on 17 September 2026. https://carsmultiverse.com/recall/26v388/
The copy quoted above hashes to 48ecd8483733c4edb95a10e1645f5b32…. If the notice is reworded later, that fingerprint will not match, which is how a reader checks that the quotation was of the version we say it was.
The cross-border matches used on this site are deposited as a citable dataset: doi:10.5281/zenodo.22087136. The recall wording itself is published by the national authority named above and is theirs, not ours.
The recall record and its wording are published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and are US Government public domain. The dated archive, the comparison and any before-and-after above are CarsMultiverse. How fresh every engine behind this page is, is public on the status page. To check a specific vehicle, use NHTSA’s own VIN lookup.
The fingerprint of this notice
We take a SHA-256 of each of the three blocks of text the authority publishes and keep the first eight characters. As we last read campaign 26V388 on 23 August 2026, they were:
- Defect summary
2d109ea7 - Consequence
b0c5022c - Remedy
5d5d3bbe
We first read this notice on 21 August 2026. It has not moved since. If it ever does, these characters will not match, and the change will be dated here.
The wording we hold for 26V388 · how the whole register is watched
This notice names one vehicle among several registers that have written about it. Every notice this site holds for the Thomas Built Buses Saf-T-Liner HDX2, in all seven, is kept on that vehicle's own page, with the newest in each.
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Owners of these cars
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