Fageol is an endlessly fascinating company. The company was founded by Rollie, William, Frank and Claude Fageol in 1916 to manufacture trucks, tractors, and automobiles in Oakland, CA. The Fageol brothers were unusually creative, and the result was an endless string of unusual designs. The first bus ever designed from scratch and not just a body on a truck chassis was their Safety Bus from 1921. We covered it here in a post on their double decker bus.
The Fageol Brothers left the company in 1927 to focus on just buses, with their unique Twin Coach buses and a very early articulated bus. Even without them, Fageol trucks continued to make innovative and unusual trucks, such as the somewhat bizarre Super Freighter. But they also developed a line of more conventional but very handsome heavy duty trucks, typified in this one from the late 1930s. Fageol went into receivership in the depths of the Depression, and in 1939 it finally found a buyer, lumberman T.A. Peterman, who needed a source of custom-designed trucks for that application. The truck line was of course called Peterbilt, and is still going strong, as part of PACCAR, the only wholly American-owned big truck company (VW owns a big chunk of Navistar).
Isn’t this a gorgeous truck? How about another, and an early Peterbilt?
Here’s another one, hauling gasoline, it would seem. I can’t do an in-depth post right now, but Fageol was very innovative in their power units too, and by this time, they were using mostly Cummins or Waukesha diesels. Diesels were still extremely uncommon in the eastern half of the country at this time, and would be yet so for quite some time. But out West, where the distances were great, the trucks big, and the thinking tended to be more innovative, diesels were adopted quite early on, and in part it explains the large and tall hoods on these, as these early diesels were huge compared to the gas engines.
Gong back a few years, here’s a big Fageol truck and trailer from the 1920s, an early Consolidated Freight Lines, no less. That company would go on to design and build their own trucks, the Freightliner, which became the biggest competitor to Peterbilt and Kenworth, and is today the biggest of the HD truck manufacturers (owned by Daimler).
Here’s a Peterbilt from the 1940s. These West Coast trucks are very important historically, as their influence become enormous as length limitations were increasingly lifted in the East, and Peterbilt and Kenworth started selling their trucks there. These two most of all became iconic as the big American conventional (with hood) truck, and influenced the rest of the industry enormously.
And Peterbilt will still build a Model 389 for you today, a direct descendant of the big Fageol trucks of the late ’20s and ’30s. Has any other vehicle been built with such a direct lineage of some 100 years?
“any other vehicle”?
Great brain teaser Paul and I can’t come close. I figure 64 years for the Lockheed C-130 and 62 years for the Honda Super Cub. Perhaps some model of the Indian Royal Enfield has been around as long but I doubt it.
Piper J-3 Cub came out in 1938, 82 years ago. It’s predecessor, the Taylor E-2 Cub was introduced in 1930, 90 years ago. There are still updated variations on the market today. However, I do not think production has been continuous.
Great shots, especially the Borden’s Ice Cream truck at the top. I wasn’t aware of the Fageol/Peterbilt connection, but it certainly makes sense. A logging baron who needed specialized trucks and a company in financial straits with the expertise to build what he needed…and the rest is history.
I know there was a lapse when Morgan built no three-wheelers, and the current one wasn’t their design, but it comes close to the originals. Their four-wheelers only date from the 1930s.
Always been fascinated by Peterbilt and Kenworth trucks….
Still, 84 years for Morgan, with the lineage arguably more direct than the Peterbuilt. Still wood in the structure and it looks very, very similar.
There was little difference between the latest Fageols and earliest Peterbilts, and further confusing matters was the fact that the factory often rebuilt older Fageols using Peterbilt parts. Fageol and Peterbilt also used Hall-Scott gasoline and butane engines early on.
Quite true, about the H-S. And I’m getting close to doing a history on that august firm.
Eagerly awaited. Their old factory in Berkeley is stunning. Hands down the elegant engine works ever built, and well repurposed today.
I’ve gone by there, or what I think is “there”, but maybe you could elaborate on how it has been re-purposed?
Love those old Peterbilt conventionals! I’ve always found them sinister and intimidating, mainly because I saw and heard this fine example for the first time when I was around 10 years old or so.
Duel…great movie with Dennis Weaver and his Plymouth Valiant chased by a sadistic trucker in a Peterbilt 281
The only longer continuous ownership that I can think of is Armbruster Stageway in Ft Smith, which started making stagecoaches in 1887. Still the same location and ownership, still making coaches, not merged into mere brand-name-ness.
I said nothing about continuous ownership; There were at least three different owners building this line of trucks: Fageol, Peterbilt and Paccar. Your example is irrelevant.
The modern Peterbilt conventionals don’t share a lot with the earlier models, but PACCAR is very good at maintaining the traditional looks, so in that sense it’s similar to the latest Jeep JL vs a WWII Jeep. And PACCAR didn’t buy Peterbilt until 1958. But the lineage is certainly long … to me, as a former Peterbilt employee, the sad part was leaving the Bay Area in 1993, another nail in the coffin of Alameda County’s motor vehicle history. Please don’t move your Tesla factory, Mr Musk!
Great report! Some of these old trucks look so cool, like the Borden and gasoline truck, they almost seem like modern restomods. The styling of the cab, and details like the pinstriping on the bumpers, is amazing. And the long, elegant wheelbase. Such excellent styling on these trucks. Even the door-mounted mirrors (and location) looks awesome.
Not a Peterbilt, but this 30s Ford is another example of a 90 year old truck that so is well styled and detailed, it could have been customized today. Love the overall low profile, Coke script and box, and great looking wheels. Talented modellers, who make small scale scratch-made versions, love trucks that look this good.
I had forgotten about the Peterbilt tie-in too.
Actually there is one other US big truck maker: Autocar is owned by an Illinois company and manufactures trucks in Indiana and Alabama. They introduced the DC-64 heavy line last year, though these may be on the upper edge of medium duty. In any case, they claim a lineage that goes back to 1897.
Oops, forgot the picture.
A lineage that included 50 years of being a essentially a top of the line White or Volvo?
Autocar was sold to White in 1953. And just spun off by Volvo in 2001 purely out of necessity to meet anti-trust laws. The gave up a single line of White-Volvo refuse trucks to a private equity group. I’d hardly call a low front cab refuse truck “a lineage” with the large conventional trucks they used to make. But that was their only product for some time. More like a resurrection, on a very limited scale. I see that they’ve started making a conventional truck again too, very recently.
Also, my question was not about ownership lineage, as these tucks were built by at least three owners (Fageol, Peterbilt and PACCAR. My question was specifically about a single product (HD long hood conventional cab truck) that has been built continuously for some 100 years; it evolved in a direct lineage, but was never a clean sheet new truck. There is a direct genetic link in today’s Peterbilt 359 to the large Fageol truck of the 1920s.
No question that Autocar cannot claim the same kind of product continuity as Fageol/Peterbilt/Paccar. Still, I count it as a win that a brand with it’s history has come out of foreign ownership and revived itself as a standalone company that builds real trucks.
Agreed.
How about Studebaker which built vehicles if you count wagons and carriages,
from 1852 until 1966
Another one who didn’t read my question properly. I Has any other vehicle been built with such a direct lineage of some 100 years?
Direct lineage=essentially the same vehicle/product or direct evolution thereof. I don’t remember Studebaker selling wagons after about 1910 or so.
Is Mack disqualified?
One hundred years ago, Mack’s were chain drive with a radiator mounted on the firewall. They don’t have such a Model in the 2020 catalog.
With that logic, if we can narrow it down to speculation and today’s catalog offerings, along with specifics of component types, etc., this should be easy…
IF Peterbilt had published a catalog in 1920, some 20 years prior to their founding, and IF Peterbilt had offered a 1920 truck in the class of chain-drive Mack, the truck might have been similar to this 1920 Fageol, as pictured at Coachbuilt.
To verify the lineage, is there such a hard-tired, open cab model offered in the 2020 Pete catalog?
Fair enough, but my response was to point out that the chain drive Mack was just a step above an ox drawn wagon and neither had a place in future commerce.
Understood, but almost everything 1920 wasn’t far away from the ox cart But, dissing chain-drive in 1920 as archaic, in this discussion is ironic, because the first “Peterbilts” circa 1940 were (wait for it…) chain-drive!
For now I’m thinking that considering overall longevity, along with name and product recognition and continuality, it’d be either Ford from the Model A era forward, or Mack.
If the window were narrowed to post-war, Pete would definitely be in the running.
Seagrave, with fire apparatus?
As far as a vehicle manufacture having the longest continuous unbroken chain of ownership, it’s probably Ford, with just one restructuring when the company was taken public. To boot, Ford’s one change was planned, rather than a hardship-caused takeover, or such. It’d seem some Ford product could qualify in lineage?
There are some examples in the motorcycle world:
Most notably, something like the Harley-Davidson “Big Twin” has been produced since 1911 in volume. It has changed, but is also recognizably the same as well.
From what I understand, the Royald Enfield singles with some lineage to the Royal Enfield/India single available today didn’t really show up until the mid-1920’s.
As mentioned in the first comment, the Honda Super Cub has been in continuous production since 1958, which isn’t anything like 100 years, but it also has changed much less than any of the other examples cited.
And unlike any of the others, there’s a mind-boggling 100 million+ of the Honda to display that lack of change!
How about the Oshkosh P-series? It’s a conventional (as opposed to cab-forward or COE) truck, with all-wheel drive in a conventional arrangement with a transfer case, not too far away from the original Oshkosh Model A of 1918. It has been continuously evolving since then.
Maybe this is a better picture, of a slightly later model B.
The Oskhosh P-series
Good point with the OshKosh.
That ice-cream truck is just sculpture.
I can only offer the Oz Ford Falcon, which never had a totally clean sheet design in 56 years. For example, the bore spacings on the 4.0 twin cam six of 2016 were the same as those in the 2.3 pushrod job from 1960, and made in exactly the same part of the factory. I believe (ie: it’s rumoured) that some very large factory equipment was common to the end.
Hardly 100 years, ofcourse.
I can revise and increase my first answer citing continuous production of vehicles by a decade or so. Beechcraft Bonanza is now at 73 years and counting – though using two different empennage designs.
You guys are a screech! I love the comments. Regarding the denigration of Autocar because it survived as an entity building only COE and cab forward COE, I proudly sold Autocars during the time that there was the White GMC combine and later the Volvo takeover. I sold conventionals and both types of COE’s. The trucks were built specifically for each user. It was a rewarding experience to deliver the trucks after six months or a year of work to make the truck just as needed for the job. I am happy that Autocar now is back in the conventional cab models. I am happy that Autocar survived.