MS mentioned the KTA engine recently, and I thought to collect my thumbnail histories of US heavy truck industry.  This isn’t complete or well documented (in fact, all the hard details are plagiarized from wiki), but, as a manufacturing buddy used to say, it’s directionally correct, only useful in avoiding an open post . . . here goes.

I know a little about “American” heavy truck.  Over the road trucks discussed here generally mean Class 8:  33,001 pounds gross and heavier, so semi tractors and the very largest straight trucks and dump trucks. Medium duty starts at 26,001 pounds and is generally built by the same firms.  There’s no law on badging, which is mere product positioning, but, for example, an F350 is a class 3 vehicle . . . and so on.  Personal note:  my truck is class 2 but is nevertheless badged as a “1500;” it’s a so-called “HD” of the light truck sort, but, in the business, “heavy duty” and “heavy truck” mean Class 8.

The big boys in North America are Paccar, Volkswagen, Daimler, and Volvo.  In automotive, brands are called badges after the hood nameplate tradition; which badges are whose is a fun puzzle I’ll solve a bit at a time below.

 

 

Detroit Mucks About

 

circa 1968 C70

GM had built heavy trucks since 1938.  They got out of the business and essentially sold their Detroit Diesel business to Penske in 1988.  DDE would come to matter very much very soon.

 

 

 

Ford L series

Ford is a rambling story and irrelevant today; they built bigger trucks starting in 1948 or so until they sold that business to Daimler in 1997.  Reviving a dead pre-war badge, Sterling was focused increasingly on medium duty until it was rendered redundant by 2008.

 

 

 

Dodge similarly bumbled about the business from maybe Korea.  I’m not an expert on Dodge, but I don’t think anyone is, and you have to ask yourself:  who would buy a Dodge when affordable, competent trucks were being built by International in those same years?  With the oil crises and interest rates in double digits, the answer was clear by 1976:  nobody.

 

 

Steady Eddie and Eddy

 

Smokey and the Bandit Kenworth W900

Kent and Worthington created Kenworth in 1923; Pacific Car bought them in 1945.

T.A. Peterman tuned military trucks during the Depression; Pacific Car bought the firm in 1958.

Paccar still owns Kenworth and Peterbilt as well as Leyland (UK) and DAF (NL).  It is widely regarded as one of the best-managed corporations of any sort in America.  They build about a fourth of US class 8.

 

 

1960 Pete 281

Being steady and knowing what you’re doing doesn’t lead to a long and winding story.

 

Other Ancient News

Consolidated Freightways, a cartage company, had built their own trucks since the Depression.  There are stories about why:  gasoline engines and trouble climbing the Rockies; but one thing is confirmed:  CFi was the largest trucking firm in the US for several years.  CFi collapsed during the Reagan administration, the rightful victim of deregulation and recession, and Daimler bought the Freightliner division in 1981.  ConMet was a Freightliner division from 1964 to 1987 and continues to supply the industry with components and even integrated systems.  Freightliner continues to build the most Class 8 trucks of any firm in North America, about a third.  Daimler has been the largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in the world for years.

Freightways Freightliner

 

International Transtar dominated the 1970s market

McCormick and Deering merged to form International Harvester in 1902, the great American farming tractor company.  Their first pickup dates from around 1908, and they became a serious truck company in 1961.  The agricultural and equipment conglomerate started coming unwound, and they began divesting assets in 1982; by 1986 they ran out of time and cash and took bankruptcy.  Navistar emerged and survives as their umbrella firm.

 

 

 

Mack B68

The Mack Brothers’ first truck was built in 1907, and their model AC was the first great post-horse military transport.  Particularly successful on the Western Front, Mack brought back the bulldog nickname earned for their tenacious consistency.  The bulldog endures as a “hood” ornament, mostly in a silvery chrome; for many years a golden bulldog signified that the attached vehicle had Mack engine, transmission, and axles.

 

 

 

William Brockway started building trucks in New York before that same war, mostly vocational, that part of the business which includes platforms for garbage collection and concrete mixer/delivery.

The wiki entry on Autocar is excellent:  they built their first truck in 1899 in Pittsburgh.

Marmon hand-built huge trucks and are said to have built the heaviest truck ever.  The frame rails I saw were matched elsewhere in the severe duty sector by bolting together two steel channels on each side of the chassis.

Volvo built its first truck in Sweden in 1928.  They continued to steadily grow by producing cars, marine engines, and construction vehicles.  By 1970 they were an eminent, storied, premier, but mostly European manufacturer.

 

 

Other Corporate Games

Mack bought Brockway in 1956.  Early seventies Brockways were obviously just badged Macks, and the brand was discontinued in 1977, but by then the Mack concrete truck had become an American fixture.

White started with steam vehicles in 1898 but slowly, eventually became a marketing company putting their badge on everything from sewing machines to trucks; White is associated with Freightliner, GM, and Volvo, and they bought Autocar in 1953.  They built the Western Star plant in British Columbia in 1967.  Volvo bought many of White’s assets in 1981 and set up office in Greensboro.  Volvo then spun off Western Star which was acquired by Daimler in 2001, who quickly consolidated production to Portland OR where that badge survives, a very small line positioned for severe duty.

As evidence of how goofy some of that got, this is an early American Volvo:

Volvo: White GMC with Autocar fender badge

 

and we’re waiting here in Allentown

Renault bought a stake in Mack in 1979 and acquired the rest in 1990.  Volvo, which sold their car business to Ford in 1989, acquired Renault’s truck division in 2001.  Autocar was then sold to GVW and survives as a tiny specialty truck company.

Mack’s original offices were relocated to GSO, and I miss them.  It was full of 20- and 30-year veterans; they remembered everything and were very hands-on and slow, and, of course, markets won’t tolerate that, and neither could Volvo.

Volvo is the premier business-equipment truck with an excellent safety record; Volvo builds maybe a fifth of Class 8, including Mack, which continues mostly as their vocational line.

Penske sold DDE to Daimler in 2000, so they then had the largest engine capacity in North America.  DDE engines have long since been standard equipment on Freightliners and at some point were no longer made available to Daimler competitors.

Marmon never sold many trucks and eventually was displaced by high-volume competition, but I suspect their legacy in north Texas is the second reason why Peterbilt built a plant in Denton.  The only Marmon plant I ever visited was in Garland and ran until 1999; the last Marmon I ever saw was maybe 2014.  International has had several projects since in the Garland facility, mostly specialty products that I’m sure my NDA still covers.

Speaking of Denton, I know they had at least one plant in King County WA near corporate, and I worked at the one in Madison TN.  Around 2008 or 2009, Madison’s union struck, and Paccar responded by building what they could at non-union Denton, which, in that economy, was good enough.  The strike continued, Denton was retooled to handle all the Madison models, and Paccar simply forgot to attend any more negotiations in Tennessee.  The Denton plant is exactly what you might predict:  warm, collaborative, and hard-working; do take the tour if you’re ever near DFW.

I touched in a recent thread upon the American struggle with meeting engine emissions requirements.  It’s probably fair to say this was a big part of International’s recent problems; Navistar was acquired by Volkswagen in 2020.

That’s all I know:  maybe more than I know.

 

that’s all, folks !!