Kalmar recalled Ottawa T2 tractors over a power board that could short and catch fire

On October 5, 2026, Kalmar issued a recall notice with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration covering the Ottawa T2 4x2 DOT/EPA, Ottawa T2 Off Road and Ottawa T2 6x4 DOT/EPA terminal tractor configurations.

The power distribution board in the cabin can suffer a breakdown of electrical insulation resistance and may short circuit — which in very rare circumstances has led to thermal events. Units involved in those events account for less than 0.001% of the Ottawa T2 fleet, the company said.

The fix adds a remote ground stud (RGS/fuse) to completely isolate certain electrical circuits and prevent thermal events. Kalmar will notify customers directly in the coming weeks, and its service team will coordinate scheduling to return vehicles to service as promptly as possible.

NHTSA recall across three Ottawa T2 configurations; fewer than 0.001% of fleet units experienced thermal events

The cabin power distribution board could lose insulation resistance and short circuit — a failure mode that ends in thermal events.

The defect sat across three production configurations of a current product line, so every affected tractor needed the same hardware fix.

A thermal event in a vehicle cabin is a fire risk even at very low frequency, which is what turned the issue into a formal NHTSA recall.

A defect seen in far less than a percent of units still justifies a full recall when the failure mode is fire — rare is not the same as ignorable.

Kalmar framed the update as proactive and said customer safety and operational reliability were paramount; affected owners will be contacted directly with implementation details and service scheduling for the RGS installation.