CarBrandLogos archive · Peterbilt · 1967

Peterbilt359

The long-nose conventional that set the shape of the American owner-operator truck.

Photo: Peterbilt · Public domain

The story

A defining chapter in Peterbilt history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Peterbilt 359, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Peterbilt traces back to 1939, when lumberman T. A. Peterman bought the assets of the failing Fageol truck works in Oakland to build logging trucks for his own operation. Three decades later the company introduced the 359, and it became the model that fixed the marque's identity in the public mind.

1939 Peterbilt 334 truck · Mahanga · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

The formula was a long hood, a square aluminium cab, and a chassis that could be specified almost without limit by the buyer. That last point mattered most. The 359 arrived as owner-operators were becoming a large and self-conscious part of American trucking, and it was the truck many of them chose when the specification was theirs to write, then decorated with chrome, lights and paint until no two were alike.

1st Annual Fresno Lesbian-Gay Pride '91 · niiicedave · CC BY-SA 2.0

Bakersfield, Truck Peterbilt at Flying J Travel Plaza

In production

It stayed in production for two decades, an unusually long run for a Class 8 tractor, and its silhouette has outlived it: surviving examples are restored and shown, and the 379 that replaced it was in large part an effort not to change what the 359 had established.

Bakersfield, Truck Peterbilt at Flying J Travel Plaza · Pierre André Leclercq · CC BY-SA 4.0

Technical specification