During the 2000s, Thomas began to wind down its presence in the transit bus segment. While the Thomas Dennis SLF found buyers, the product line struggled to gain a foothold against established transit buses; after 2002, the Thomas Dennis joint venture was reorganized by Daimler (effectively replacing Thomas with distributor Orion). The Thomas-designed TL960 (which replaced the aging Chartour/CL960) was discontinued in 2002, replacing dedicated transit buses with school bus derivatives as Thomas consolidated commercial production to the Transit Liner EF/ER.