(engine revving)
- Breaker one-nine,
there's some diesel bears hasslin' a chicken truck
in a cab-over Pete at 32 yard stick.
I'm south bound, hammer-down, bein' cool on the stool.
How's it lookin' over yer shoulder good buddy?
Wind 'er up and let 'er go, c'mon!
Kentucky Cobra over and out!
Over the last hundred plus shows, we've talked
about a lot of things that replaced the horse.
But we've never talked about anything that replaced
the horse and the river?
So button up your plaid shirts and hold onto your hats
with the mesh in the back.
(truck horn blowing)
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on Peterbilt!
Toot, toot!
(video game music)
(bell ringing)
- [Interviewer] James, that was quite an intro we just saw.
I know it might be hard, but can you try to put into words
how you're feeling right now?
- Speechless really, just, uh, speechless.
There's so many people that I wanna thank right now
for getting me to this point.
First and foremost, I wanna thank Nos energy drink
for partnering with me,
partnering with donut,
partnering with Up to Speed.
I don't think I coulda got through that intro
without Nos energy drink.
Also, I wanna thank this falcon.
I've never met this falcon before but I saw him flying up
in the air while I was doing the intro and I thought,
"Man, I'd really like to make Nos energy drink
and this falcon proud of me."
- [Falcon] You did good, James!
You did good!
- Thank you falcon.
From here on out, I'm just gonna try and make you proud.
I'm gonna live to make Nos energy drink and this falcon
proud of me, thank you very much.
(applause)
Majestic.
(bell ringing)
Who was Peter and what did he built?!
We're talkin' 'bout semis baby!
(truck horn honking)
In the 1930's a guy named Theodore A. Peterman
owned a lumber mill in Tacoma, Washington
and he needed wood for his mill.
Luckily, the pacific northwest is full of trees
and lumberjacks who cut them down.
But once the trees become logs, there wasn't a quick
and easy way to transport them to the mill.
They were either floated down a river,
or hauled by steam-powered tractors,
or real actual live, buff horses.
I don't know if you've noticed,
but those things aren't very fast.
And they weren't cuttin' it for T.A. Peterman.
So, he started picking up old surplus military trucks
and rebuilding them into tractor trailers
that could haul his logs.
I hope this is one of the episodes where he talks fast
'cause I gotta drop a log right now.
Statistics show that most of you are dropping a log.
You
are pooping.
(laughter)
Every time he got another truck, he improved it in some way,
like replacing hand-crank starters with electric ones.
When the Great Depression left a lot of small businesses
in big trouble, he bought the bankrupt
Fageol Motor Company in 1938.
They'd been making buses, trucks, and tractors in
Oakland, California.
That allowed Peterman to start building his own truck
chassis and thus the Peterbilt company was born.
Toot-toot!
- Toot-toot!
Toot.
The first two models were the steel-cab 334
and the chain driven 260.
And they went on sale to the public in 1939.
As you might expect, the chain driven truck idea,
didn't work out that well
and they dropped it pretty quickly.
By 1942 almost the whole world was all pissed
off at each other and the production shifted
to the war effort instead.
Petermans sadly passed away just before the war ended
and his wife sold the company to seven employees
but kept the land that the business sat on.
Once the war was over, commercial business quickly
picked up. Especially over the next ten to fifteen years.
By then Peterbilt was already known for making
quality trucks with strong performance.
They introduced the Model 280 and the 350
with the long nose cab design that would become
the classic semi truck shape for decades.
(Horn blows)
The next 281 and 351 models had super long
narrow front ends that earned them the nickname
Needlenose.
They were in production for over twenty years
which is probably why your idea of what a stereotypical
semi-truck looks like is basically a Peterbilt Needlenose.
They mostly ran fourteen liter Cummins diesels
making around two hundred forty horsepower
and six hundred and eighty to
eight hundred pound feet of torque.
(Engine revving)
Top speed probably wasn't even seventy miles per hour.
Peterbilt also made cab-over
versions with funny bubble noses.
See cab-overs were popular back in the day
because trucking was highly regulated but
in 1935 Motor Carrier Act. A truck length was
limited to sixty five feet with the cab over the
engine the truck would have a much shorter wheel base.
That allowed more space for more cargo.
And that means more money. But they are not as safe.
They are harder to work on and they're not as
comfortable for drivers as conventional curb sniffers.
Hmm? (Laughter)
When the trucking industry was deregulated and
the length limit was extended to seventy five feet
cab-overs fell out of favor. You don't see flatnose
trucks in the State much anymore.
Mostly just in Europe and Asia. But they call 'em Lorries.
Probably because the all look like Hugh Laurie
who is a famous British actor.
As the 1950's rolled on construction of the
new interstate highway system got underway.
Smooth paved roads that crisscrossed the country
meant goods could be quickly shipped by trucks
virtually anywhere. And in 1956 containerized
intermodal shipping was invented.
So tons of stuff could be shoved in a big metal box
and moved directly from ship to train to truck to Walmart.
- For even this variable some kind of a
truck is bringing in something unique.
- Business started booming big time baby!
In 1958 Peterman's widow Aida decided to
sell the land out from under the factory.
Peterbilt shareholders just couldn't stomach
having to build a whole new plant so they sold
the company to Pacific Car and Foundry
company which is now known as Paccar.
Pacific Car and Foundry built them a brand new
factory, just down the road in Newark, California.
Where they'd stay for almost thirty years.
The sixties brought a lighter cab made from
aluminium. And the Unilite tilt-over cab that
could be pivoted a full ninety degrees for better access.
A flying bird hood ornament was added above
the red oval badge. Two things that unchanged
in new Peterbilt trucks until today.
In sixty-seven the wide nose model 359 came out
and solidified Peterbilt as one of the top names
in the long haul big rig game.
You could order a 359 any way you wanted it.
Just like Lamborghini.
There were endless engine and transmission combos
to choose from and options like
aluminum sleeper cabs, chrome breather canisters,
tall exhaust stacks and bling ass grilles.
The last four hundred produced were numbered
special editions with custom paint jobs.
And they're worth bank today!
By the 1970's trucker culture was a full on thing.
Truckers were seen as modern cowboys and outlaws
and everyone wanted plaid shirts, mesh hats and mustaches.
They drove long stretches of desolate highway
and warned each other about highway patrol
using sick lingo on their CB radios.
It's romantic as f****!
- [Truck Driver 1] Breaker one-seven for the sleepy eye?
- [Truck Driver 2] You got the sleepy eye, bring it on back.
- The freedom and romance of the open road
captured everyone's imagination and made its way
into a lot of popular entertainment.
In 1971, Steven Spielburg's first movie, Duel,
featured an unseen trucker in a rusty Peterbilt
Needlenose tanker chasing a man
in a red Plymouth all over the desert.
In 1976 the CB lingo song, Convoy
(Music Playing)
About a bunch of truckers avoiding toll booths
and speed traps was number one on the Billboard
charts for a week! Snowman the bootleg trucker
had bandit, Bert Reynolds in a Fire-chicken, brought
CB slang and kitschy radio handles into the mainstream.
- [Actor] (Rambliing)
because the snowman is coming too!
- There was so many trucker movies that
practically every seventies action star got one.
Actually this is starting to sound like a really cool
Saturday night, do you wanna watch these together?
That's ten-four roger, I'm coming over.
By the 1980's though truckers had
a scuzzier reputation and the masses shifted
their attention to hair spray synthesizers and teen angst.
But there was still one good trucker, Optimus Prime!
(Music playing)
The original Optimus Prime was a cab-over semi.
Where would we be without the Transformers?
Frickin' nowhere! That's where.
We certainly wouldn't have the baddest
ass costumes you've ever seen.
(Mysterious music playing)
Semi-trucks found another home off the highways
and out of the larger public eye.
When truckers took a break from working
they started to race at local ovals and drag strips.
Truck tuners cranked up the boost and
started to roll some serious coal!
The eighties also saw the launch of the most
popular Peterbilt of all time. The model 379.
Older operators bought more of them than any other truck.
And they were a favorite on the show circuit.
Yeah, there's semi-truck shows.
Big rigs drive over a hundred and seventy five
billion miles a year in the U.S. alone.
Delivering sixty eight percent of everything that we buy.
That works out to about sixty thousand
pounds of crap per person, every year.
That's eight hundred and twenty three inholents
Even though the original Optimus Prime was a cab-over,
A live action Optimus Prime was a 379. Which is...
...Not accurate to Canon!
It's also the truck in the heist from my son
Nolan's favorite movie of all time,
The Fast and the Furious. That was supposedly a 379.
Or maybe it was a 359. I'm gonna admit that
I can't tell them apart and the internet says its both.
And if you're an expert on semi-truck things,
please let me know on the comments below, which one is it?
As time went on, Peterbilt started fancying
up their interiors. You could even get four
different dash colors. There was over
three million long haul truckers in the U.S.
And a lot of those people live in
their rigs for most of the year.
Today these long distance trucks are like tiny motor homes.
You can get a Peterbilt model 587 sleeper cab
with a thirty inch aisle, swivel chairs,
closets, and under-bunk storage.
Or the new 579 Ultraloft High-roof Sleeper
with double bunks for driver teams, space
for a full size microwave, a thirty two inch TV
and a cabinet specifically designed
for storing two see pap machines.
Now those are for treating sleep apnea.
That's a medical condition that causes snoring.
At the next party you go to, you're kinda nervous,
just like walk up to someone and say,
"Hey do you know what a see pap machine is?
Did you know Optimus Prime was originally a
cab-over truck?" And then just stare.
Just stare at em. It'll work okay, found a girlfriend.
Modern Peterbilt trucks are more aerodynamic and
more fuel efficient than ever.
The Peterbilt 386 was actually the first
semi-truck to be designated, Environmentally friendly
by the EPA. So good job Peterbilt.
Another way big rigs are becoming more efficient
is by switching to automated manual transmissions.
(Music playing)
You'd think that this would've happened earlier.
I mean we've had automatic transmissions for
over half a century but they're not traditional
automatics with torque converters.
They're really just what they sound like,
Automated manuals that still use a clutch.
Fuel economy in these is better than regular manuals
and the transmission is up to four hundred pounds
lighter than an automatic. That means
the truck can haul four hundred pounds more payload.
That means more money baby! More money baby!
New trucks are starting to get all the new car tech.
Stuff like adaptive cruise control for stop
and go traffic, forward collision prevention,
and lane keep assist. Lane keeping is
probably the biggest help for truckers.
You spend literally all day making small steering
corrections just to stay between lanes.
Peterbilt and other companies are also working on
Platooning technology that digitally links trucks
in a convoy. The trucks will automatically talk
to each other so they can follow at super close
distances at the same speed, which reduces traffic
and improves MPGs. They're draftin' baby!
Let's get into what you really wanna know about,
them big old diesel boy engines!
What does it take to haul eighty thousand pounds
down the road? Peterbilts run a couple versions
of a 12.9 liter inline six engine that weighs
twenty six hundred pounds dry.
The top of the line MX-13 engine makes
five hundred and ten buff horses and up to
eighteen hundred and fifty pound-feet of twist
and nine- nine hundred RPM.
That's the opposite of Vtec. Hm...
They're designed to sixty to seventy five thousand
miles between oil changes and run on a million
miles, a million miles, before needing a rebuild.
Five hundred is a big figure for stock diesel
horsepower, but sled pooling and drag racing semis
are now running compound turbo set-ups and able
to put out over three thousand buff hrs babies.
(Engine revving)
2019 is Peterbilts eightieth anniversary.
Happy birthday buddy. And this past January
their one millionth truck rolled out of their
Denton, Texas factory. They gave it away to
a certified Peterbilt super-fan at
the Mid-America trucking show.
- [Auctioneer] Rick Mclarkin, Peterbilt's
number one superfan!
- You know what? That's a damn fine tribute
to a long legacy of impressive big rigs.
(Soft music playing)