The trucks that built America: American truck manufacturers, then and now

America’s work trucks: a timeline

1. 1898Winton builds a gasoline delivery wagon in Cleveland
2. 1899Autocar builds a delivery wagon it promotes as America’s first truck
3. 1900Jack and Gus Mack found Mack Brothers in Brooklyn
4. 1907International Harvester builds 73 high-wheel Auto Wagons
5. 1910American LaFrance builds its first successful motor fire engine
6. 1912Gar Wood patents the hydraulic dump hoist
7. 1916Mack introduces the AC, soon nicknamed the Bulldog
8. 1917The Army orders FWD four-wheel-drive trucks; Ford launches the Model TT; Oshkosh is founded
9. 1933Kenworth builds America’s first production diesel truck
10. 1945Heil introduces the self-packing Colecto-Pak refuse body
11. 1956The Interstate highway act funds 41,000 miles of new road, built by dump trucks and mixers
12. 1981Volvo buys bankrupt White Motor, and foreign groups begin buying American truck brands
13. 2023Oshkosh’s McNeilus launches the Volterra electric refuse truck

Free to share: teachers, museums and truck clubs are welcome to reuse this timeline. Please credit “Timeline: Vocational Trucks of America” and link to vocationaltrucksofamerica.com/blog-history-of-american-work-trucks.html.

The first trucks 1898 to 1916

Who built America’s first truck is still argued. Cleveland’s Winton Motor Carriage Co. built a gasoline delivery wagon in 1898. (Invention & Technology; The Henry Ford) Autocar, founded in Pittsburgh in 1897 and soon moved to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, built a delivery wagon in 1899 that it still promotes as America’s first truck. The Smithsonian dates Autocar’s regular truck production to 1907. (Autocar; Smithsonian)

Others followed fast. Brothers Jack and Gus Mack opened Mack Brothers in Brooklyn in 1900 and were building fire trucks by 1911. (Mack Trucks Historical Museum; Encyclopedia.com) International Harvester’s first truck, the 1907 Auto Wagon, was a high-wheeler styled like a farm buggy; it built 73 that year, about 7% of all U.S. trucks. (American Car Historian) White, a Cleveland sewing machine company, built its first trucks in 1900, and the GMC name went on trucks in 1912. (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History; Work Truck Online)

War and four-wheel drive 1912 to 1918

The Army turned trucks from a novelty into a necessity. In a 1912 test, it ran trucks from FWD, White and Autocar 1,509 miles to see whether they could replace mules and wagons. (Military Trader) FWD, founded in Clintonville, Wisconsin, in 1909, built some of the first practical four-wheel-drive trucks. The Army ordered 3,750 of its three-ton Model B in July 1917, and FWD licensed Kissel, Premier, Mitchell and Peerless to keep up. More than 14,000 Model Bs reached the Army. (Military Trader; SAHB)

Mack introduced the AC in 1916. British troops nicknamed it the “Bulldog” for its toughness, and Mack made the bulldog its symbol in 1922. (Heavy Duty Trucking) Fifteen makers, including Chicago’s Diamond T, built the standardized “Liberty” Army truck. (Military Trader; RM Sotheby’s) The same year, Ford launched its 1-ton Model TT, which sold 1.3 million by 1928, and FWD co-founder William Besserdich helped start Oshkosh to build four-wheel-drive trucks. (Automotive Fleet; Oshkosh)

How a truck became a work truck

A truck becomes vocational when it does a job, not just hauls a load. These American firsts made that happen:

• Dump trucks.In 1911, Gar Wood watched a driver shovel two tons of coal off a truck by hand. He patented a hydraulic hoist in 1912 and built it at his Wood Hoist Co. in Detroit. (Detroit Historical Society; Engine Builder)
• Garbage trucks.Milwaukee’s Heil Co. built an enclosed refuse truck in 1929 and says its 1945 Colecto-Pak was the first self-packing refuse body. (Heil)
• Snow and all-wheel drive.New York’s Walter Motor Truck Co. made all-wheel-drive snow fighters its specialty after 1923, and later airport crash trucks. (Fire Apparatus Magazine)
• Logging trucks.Kenworth started in Seattle in 1923 to haul for Northwest loggers. In 1939, lumberman T.A. Peterman bought the Fageol truck company and renamed it Peterbilt. (Kenworth; PACCAR)
• Diesel power.Kenworth built America’s first production diesel truck in 1933, with a Cummins engine. In 1938 Mack became the first truck maker to build its own diesel. (The Autopian; Encyclopedia.com)
• Big construction.Mack’s AP off-highway dumper worked on Hoover Dam. Oshkosh built the first rubber-tired earthmover in 1933 and its first concrete mixer in 1955. (Encyclopedia.com; Oshkosh)
• Fire engines.American LaFrance of Elmira, New York, built its first successful motor fire engine in 1910. (Fire Engineering)

Then came the roads. The 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act funded a 41,000-mile Interstate System, and it took fleets of dump trucks, mixers and lowboys to build it. (FHWA)

Mergers and new owners

After World War II, the field shrank. White bought Sterling in 1951, Autocar in 1953 and Diamond T in 1958, and started Western Star in 1967 for logging customers. Mack bought Brockway in 1956 and closed it in 1977. (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History; Diesel World; CCJ; 10-4 Magazine)

Then foreign groups moved in. Volvo bought White’s truck business after White went bankrupt in 1980, and Daimler-Benz bought Freightliner in 1981. Volvo completed its purchase of Mack in 2001, the same year it sold the Autocar name to an American owner, GVW Group. (Case Western; Trucking Info; trucknews; Diesel World) International Harvester became Navistar in 1986 and is now owned by Germany’s Traton Group. (FleetOwner)

Who builds America’s work trucks today

Eleven brands founded in North America still build work trucks here. Six have American parents: Kenworth, Peterbilt, Autocar, Oshkosh, Ford and Chevrolet. The rest answer to companies in Sweden, Germany or the Netherlands, but their trucks are designed and built in North America.

Sources: company plant pages and annual reports, Transport Topics and Work Truck Online. (Sources)

Freightliner sells the most heavy trucks, with about 35% of U.S. Class 8 sales in 2025, ahead of Peterbilt and Kenworth at about 15% each. Mack was the only big brand to grow in 2025, on refuse, concrete and dump orders. (Transport Topics; The Trucker)

What is changing in 2026

• Mack unveiled a redesigned Granite, with production starting January 2027 in Macungie. (Mack; Transport Topics)
• Kenworth ends production of the W900, T800W and C500 this year. (Transport Topics)
• Western Star production leaves Portland, Oregon, when that plant closes Oct. 30, 2026, and moves to the Carolinas. (Transport Topics)
• International agreed to sell its Springfield, Ohio, plant, and Chevrolet’s Silverado medium-duty trucks built there were set to end Sept. 30, 2026. (Transport Topics; Truck Parts & Service)

The body builders behind the brands

A chassis becomes a dump, garbage or bucket truck when a body builder finishes it. Most of the big American names now belong to three groups: Ox Bodies dump bodies and New Way refuse bodies (Federal Signal); McNeilus refuse bodies and Pierce fire apparatus (Oshkosh); and Heil refuse bodies and E-ONE fire apparatus (Terex). Altec of Birmingham, Alabama, builds bucket trucks and digger derricks, and Henderson of Manchester, Iowa, builds plows and spreaders. (Federal Signal; Oshkosh; Waste Dive; Terex)

Learn more about each kind of truck in the industry guides, or see them working in Trucks in Action.

Truck history FAQ

Dates and facts were checked against each source on Oct. 21, 2026. Where sources disagree, as on America’s first truck, we say so. Brand names are used for identification only, and no company paid for or reviewed this article. See something to correct? Send a correction.