A look back at truck-brand history

Freightliner owes its name to trucking company Consolidated Freightways (CF) of Portland, OR, which began rebuilding Fageol trucks to give them more power to tackle the Western mountains. Those trucks became known as “freightliners” and the company was incorporated as such in 1942, with Consolidated Freightways building them in a retooled maintenance facility in Salt Lake City, UT. After production was interrupted during WW II, manufacturing restarted in CF's home city of Portland. CF then entered into a distribution and manufacturing agreement in 1951 with the White Motor Co. of Cleveland, OH, to build the co-branded "White Freightliner" cabover higher tractor. In 1974, owing to White’s fiscal troubles, CF terminated that partnership and went back to making trucks on its own under the “Freightliner Corp.” name until 1981, when Germany’s Daimler-Benz AG bought it. Today Freightliner is a subsidiary of Daimler Trucks North America. Incidentally, CF went belly up and ceased operations in 2002.

Founded by brothers Jack and Gus Mack in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1900, and subsequently relocated to Allentown, PA, in 1905, the company did not settle on “Mack Trucks” as its name until 1922. The Bulldog became the company’s trademark after British soldiers in World War I nicknamed the trucks Mack built for the military after England’s national mascot. Mack operated as an independent company until 1990, when France’s Renault Véhicules Industriels bought it. In 2000, Sweden’s AB Volvo bought Renault and Mack, folding them into its Volvo Trucks subsidiary (more on Volvo later). In 2008, Mack reorganized and moved its headquarters to Greensboro, NC, though its main manufacturing plant still remains located outside of Allentown in Magungie, PA.

The merger of McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and the Deering Harvester Company in 1902 resulted in the formation of the International Harvester Company of Chicago, IL, which in 1907 built its first “auto wagon” to help farmers haul produce to market. During World War II, International Harvester produced the M-series of military trucks that served the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy as weapons carriers, cargo transporters and light artillery movement. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company sold off its construction and agricultural equipment businesses. After selling its agricultural division in 1985, all that remained of the original International Harvester was its heavy truck and engine operations, so the company rechristened itself in 1986 to Navistar International Corp., with “International Truck and Engine Corp.” the name of its primary subsidiary. Back in the 1940s, the logo had three diamonds; the current “single diamond” logo dates back to 2002. The company also relocated its headquarters twice – once to Warrenville, IL, in 2000 and then to Lisle, IL, in 2010. In September 2016, Navistar formed a partnership with Volkswagen Truck & Bus GmbH, the subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group that controls European heavy truck makers MAN Truck & Bus AG and Scania AB.

Though Volvo is a Swedish company, the name is derived from the Latin word Volvere, which means “to roll.” The company founders conjugated it in the first person, “Volvo,” which thus means “I roll.” Volvo AB entered the U.S. market in 1980 with the purchase of the White Motor Company, which also built Autocar-branded trucks as well, and became known in the U.S. as the Volvo White Truck Corp. In 1986, General Motors sold its American and Canadian large truck operations to Volvo White, which was renamed the Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp. and began marketing its trucks under the Volvo White GMC badge. All legacy GMC product lines were discontinued by 1990 and the Volvo White GMC name discontinued in 1997. Volvo had to divest itself of its Autocar truck holdings in 2001 as part of its deal to acquire Renault and its Mack Trucks subsidiary in 2000.

Ironically, Kenworth traces its origins to Portland, OR – home of rival Freightliner – where brothers George T. and Louis Gerlinger, Jr., opened up a car and truck dealership known as Gerlinger Motor Car Works in 1912. By 1914, they decided to build their own truck and in 1915 rolled out “The Gersix,” primarily designed for logging operations. In 1916, the company relocated to Tacoma, WA, where in 1917, Seattle businessman Edgar Worthington and his partner Captain Frederick Kent bought it, renaming it the Gersix Motor Co. In 1919, Kent retired from the business, and his son Harry Kent became Worthington's new partner and by 1923 Kent and Worthington reincorporated the business as the Kenworth Motor Truck Company – a combination of the names “Ken” and “Worth.” In 1945, the Pacific Car and Foundry Co., which is today known as PACCAR, bought Kenworth in something of a second ironic twist, as PACCAR originally built railway freight cars for a living. Incidentally, PACCAR officially changed its name to “PACCAR” back in 1971.

T.A. Peterman, a logger and manufacturer, needed a better way to get his lumber to market so he started rebuilding surplus army trucks for that purpose. In 1939, he bought Fageol Motors Co. of Oakland, CA, which had gone bankrupt in 1932, and started building trucks under the “Peterbilt” brand name. After his death in 1944, Peterman’s wife, Ida, sold the company to seven individuals within the Peterbilt organization, who then later sold the company to PACCAR in 1958. The famous red oval logo dates back to 1953. PACCAR relocated Peterbilt’s factory to a new facility in Newark, CA, in 1960. In 1986, Peterbilt’s production facilities moved again, to a new plant in Denton, TX, but its headquarters and engineering operations remained in California until 1992, until they, too, relocated to Denton. The company also established a plant to build heavy trucks for the east coast U.S. market in Madison, TN, back in 1969 but closed it in 2009, relocating that production to Denton.

In 1967 White Motor Co. started what it dubbed its “Western Star” division as White Western Star with a new plant at Kelowna, British Columbia. In 1980, however, after White went bankrupt, Volvo AB acquired its U.S. assets while Bow Valley Resource Services and Nova –  two energy-related companies based in Calgary, Alberta – purchased White’s Canadian assets, including the Kelowna plant and the Western Star nameplate and product line. In 1990, Australian businessman Terrence “Terry” Peabody bought Western Star, who then sold it in 2000 sold it to Daimler AG (then named DaimlerChrysler) where it became part of Freightliner Trucks and later Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA). In 2002, production of Western Star trucks shifted to Freightliner’s main plant in Portland, OR, where Western Star 4700, 4800, 4900 and 6900 models are still made today. In May, 2015, DTNA’s assembly plant in Cleveland, NC, began to build 4700 and 4900 models, as well as the 5700XE model.