Peterbilt Motors Company is an American manufacturer of medium- and heavy-duty Class 5 through Class 8 trucks headquartered in Denton, Texas. Founded in 1939 Peterbilt operates manufacturing facilities in Denton, Texas (1980), and Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec. From the early 1960s until the mid 1980s, the company was based in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, with its headquarters, parts department, and main plant all in Newark, California. The Newark plant closed in 1986 with all manufacturing consolidated at its facility in Denton; in 1993 headquarters and engineering also moved to Denton.

  In the early part of the 20th century, Tacoma, Washington plywood manufacturer and lumber entrepreneur T.A. Peterman was faced with a lumber logistics problem. He could not get logs from the forest to his lumber mill quickly or efficiently. He sought to improve upon the methods of the day: floating logs down river, or the use of steam tractors and horse teams. Peterman knew that if he could develop the then nascent automobile technology and build trucks, he could solve his problem.

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  Kenworth is an American manufacturer of medium and heavy-duty Class 8 trucks based in Kirkland, Washington, United States, a suburb of Seattle, Washington. It is a subsidiary of PACCAR, and is also a former manufacturer of transit buses and school buses.

Kenworth began its history in Portland, Oregon. In 1912, the company was founded by brothers George T. and Louis Gerlinger, Jr. as a car and truck dealership known as Gerlinger Motor Car Works. In 1914, they decided to build their own truck with a more powerful inline six-cylinder engine. This was the first ever put into a commercial truck. The Gersix, as it was known, unveiled in 1915, was framed in structural steel, which along with its power, made the truck ideal for the rugged Northwest, where it was used for logging.

  In 1916 the Gerlinger Motor Car Company moved to Tacoma, Washington. Seattle businessman Edgar K. Worthington was managing his mother's commercial building, where Gerlinger became a tenant, and became intrigued by the Gerlinger company. Worthington's tenant was doing quite well, or so it seemed, and the Gersix became a popular fixture in the Northwest. In 1917 Worthington and his business partner Captain Frederick Kent bought the Gerlinger business, renaming it the Gersix Motor Co. 

In 1919 Kent retired from the business, and his son Harry Kent became Worthington's new partner.

In 1922, Gersix made 53 trucks at its factory on Fairview Avenue at Valley Street. Under the new name, the company moved to 506 Mercer Street and later to 1263 Mercer Street. Trucks and motor coaches were assembled in individual bays rather than on a conventional assembly line.

  In 1923 Kent and Worthington reincorporated the business as the Kenworth Motor Truck Company. The name was a combination of the two names "Ken" and "Worth", ironically the same as the surname "Kenworth".



In 1926 they started making buses, and in 1933 Kenworth was the first American company to offer diesel engines as standard in their trucks. In 1945 Kenworth was bought by The Pacific Car and Foundry Company.

    Mack Trucks, Inc. is an American truck-manufacturing company and a former manufacturer of buses and trolley buses. Founded in 1900 as the Mack Brothers Company, it manufactured its first truck in 1907 and adopted its present name in 1922.

    Mack Trucks is a subsidiary of AB Volvo which purchased Mack along with Renault Trucks in 2000. After being founded in Brooklyn, New York, the company's headquarters were in Allentown, Pennsylvania from 1905 to 2009, when they moved to Greensboro, North Carolina.



    The entire line of Mack products is still produced in Macungie, Pennsylvania,with additional assembly plants in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Australia, and Venezuela.Currently, the company's manufacturing facilities are located at the Macungie Assembly Operations plant in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania.

    Mack Trucks is a top producer in the vocational, on-road-vehicle market, Class 8 through Class 13. It is also the most popular manufacturer of heavy-duty off-road trucks in America. The company's bulldog trademark, can be found on the front of almost all Mack trucks.



  A Mack truck with a gold-plated bulldog indicates that the entire truck is made of Mack components. Trucks with another manufacturer's transmission, engine, rear axles or suspension are given the chrome-plated bulldog.

   Western Star Trucks is a Portland, Oregon, United States based manufacturer of Class 8 commercial trucks and a subsidiary of the German Daimler AG.

  In 1967 White Trucks started the Western Star division as White Western Star with a new plant at Kelowna, British Columbia, sharing headquarters with White in Cleveland, Ohio. By 1980, White was insolvent, despite importing Semon E. "Bunkie" Knudsen, son of General Motors legend Semon Knudsen, and President of Ford Motor Company in 1969–70.

    Volvo AB acquired the U.S. assets of the company, while two energy-related companies based in Calgary, Alberta, Bow Valley Resource Services and Nova, an Alberta Corp., purchased the Canadian assets, including the Kelowna, British Columbia, plant, and the Western Star nameplate and product range.

    In 1990 Western Star Trucks was purchased by Australian businessman Terry Peabody, who turned around the company's fortunes over the next 10 years, and in 2000 the company was purchased by the Daimler AG North American truck division, Freightliner. All Western Star trucks are manufactured in the Portland, Oregon Portland Truck Plant.

   International Harvester Company (IHC or IH) was a United States agricultural machinery, construction equipment, vehicle, commercial truck, and household and commercial products manufacturer. In 1902, J.P. Morgan merged the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and Deering Harvester Company, along with three smaller agricultural equipment firms, to form International Harvester.

  International Harvester sold off its agricultural division in 1985 and renamed the company Navistar International Corporation in 1986. Case IH was formed when the agricultural division merged with J.I. Case.

The roots of International Harvester run to the 1830s, when Cyrus Hall McCormick, an inventor from Virginia, finalized his version of a horse-drawn reaper, which he field-demonstrated throughout 1831, and for which he received a patent in 1834.Together with his brother Leander J. McCormick (1819–1900), McCormick moved to Chicago in 1847 and started the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. The McCormick reaper sold well, partially as a result of savvy and innovative business practices.

  Their products came onto the market just as the development of railroads offered wide distribution to distant market areas. He developed marketing and sales techniques, developing a vast network of trained salesmen able to demonstrate operation of the machines in the field.

  Freightliner Trucks is an American manufacturer of heavy duty trucks, chassis and semi-trailer trucks in the United States. The company was founded as Freightliner Inc in 1942 and is now a division of Daimler Trucks North America, a subsidiary of the German Daimler AG.



The company is known mainly for the heavy duty class 8 diesel trucks it produces, as well as classes 5-7 trucks.As of 2005, Freightliner is the largest manufacturer of heavy duty trucks in North America with annual revenue of over $32 billion (2006 est.) and over 22,000 employees (including Detroit Diesel).

  Because Freightliner LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler, a non-American corporation, it is not included in Fortune 500 rankings. It is comparable to the 125th largest company in those rankings based on the criteria used.Manufacturing began in Burnaby, B.C., in 1961, to reduce the duty penalty on the complete vehicles sold in Canada.



  Assembly plants in Indianapolis and Chino, California complemented the main plant on Swan Island in Portland, serving the U.S. market. In 1969, a new assembly plant was opened on North Basin St., which was then converted to parts production.