Six Decades Ago, America’s First Diesel Pickup Trucks Changed Heavy Hauling Forever

If you’re an American with a need to comfortably haul a house and still return decent fuel economy, one of the Big Three’s monumental diesel pickup trucks will almost certainly be on your shortlist. But where did this begin? Where did the seeds of America’s obsession with big trucks get planted? For that, you want to flip your calendars back about 65 years, when both Dodge and International briefly brought the power and fuel economy advantages of large trucks down into the light truck market. Without them, the course of diesel truck history might have looked different.

I’ve been pretty obsessed with diesel for quite a few years now. When Rudolf Diesel invented the effective diesel engine, he saw his engine not only leaving steam behind but helping the world become a utopia. As researcher Jean-Baptiste Fressoz wrote, in Rudolf’s eye, his simple, powerful, and easy-to-maintain engines would arm the denizens of rural lands with the ability to industrialize on their own, keeping power in the hands of the people rather than large corporations.

Ironically, the same traits of the diesel engine that Rudolf thought would be great for the regular person turned out to change the world in a way that Rudolf did not intend. Diesel is the driving force behind so much of the world’s development, from construction equipment to power generation and ships. If you’ve purchased a product before, there’s a very good chance that at some point before it got into your hands it rode on a train, aboard a ship, or in a truck pulled with a mighty diesel engine. If you eat produce, there’s a chance it was farmed with the aid of a machine fueled by diesel. The world has effectively been made smaller in part thanks to diesel technology.

Of course, diesel technology has also trickled down to the consumer level. You can buy diesel heaters for your RV, diesel generators, or even small diesel engines to power a minibike if you were silly enough. Before the harsh and dirty realities unveiled by Dieselgate, the diesel engine was practically the default option for passenger vehicles in Europe. If you want the absolute maximum pulling power and fuel economy mix out of a pickup truck, diesel remains king for many buyers.

But it wasn’t always this way. For a time, if you wanted a light-duty pickup truck you were getting it with a gas engine. Then, America’s truck producers began some experiments.

America Goes Diesel

When most people talk about or write about diesel truck history, they start in the 1970s when automakers looked to diesel as a cheat code out of the high fuel prices and strained economies of the era. However, America’s curiosity about diesel trucks began long before that.

Diesels first landed in America in 1911 when Busch-Sulzer began selling engines in our country. Two years later, Alexander Winton’s Winton Engine Company became the first manufacturer to build diesels in America. But those engines found homes in equipment rather than road vehicles.

Daimler claims to have built the world’s first diesel truck in 1923. Clessie Cummins had his own achievement to brag about in 1929 when he fitted a 1925 Packard limousine with his diesel engine. That car would prove the appeal of diesel through fuel-sipping road trips. Later, a Cummins-powered racecar ran the 1931 Indianapolis 500 without having to stop for fuel. The Cummins Packard is still often regarded as the first American diesel car.

You’ll note that none of these vehicles were production cars or trucks that you could buy from a dealer. Cummins did put some diesel engines in some trucks and buses, but those were largely used as demonstrators. The first production diesel truck, Curbside Classic writes, might have been the Cummins-powered trucks offered by Kenworth in 1933. Those trucks also had the sweet vertical stacks that truckers adore today.

Take a look at the beauty above!

The pickup truck, which was still in its infancy back then, would have to wait longer. There’s one truck that is commonly reported to be the very first production diesel light truck in America, but there is a more obscure truck that likely came just a little sooner.

America’s First Light-Duty Pickup Trucks

Let’s start with the truck that is commonly reported to be the first production light-duty diesel pickup truck. As Diesel World Magazine writes, International Harvester noticed an interesting trend in the mid-1950s. The company’s Motor Truck Sales Department took note that there was a growing interest in diesel power in smaller trucks, first with medium-duty trucks. This sent International Harvester looking into what it could put diesel power into.

Coincidentally, Diesel World writes, the company’s Construction Equipment Division in Illinois was working on a new generation of diesel engines. The Construction Equipment Division figured it could take the architecture of IH’s existing Black Diamond post-World War II gasoline six-cylinder engines and use it as the backbone of compact diesel engines that IH could use throughout its portfolio. Sweetening the deal was that basing the new diesels on this architecture (which featured sixes ranging from 220 cubic inches to 264 cubic inches) meant that IH could use the same tooling, saving money.

IH engineers used this architecture to create a slew of diesel engines, starting first in 1958 with the D236 and D282 sixes, which were bolted into tractors and construction equipment. Later, a turbocharged DT282 six was used in crawler tractors and high-altitude applications. Other diesels from this program included the D252 and D301 sixes as well as D188 and D201 fours. Power outputs varied based on application. However, a D301 in a truck was rated at 112.5 HP.

The IH Motor Truck Sales Department got what it wanted. Beginning in 1958, IH began outfitting medium-duty trucks with these engines, including the B-160 and BC-160. The first couple of hundred engines were sold to select customers and only a handful went overseas. By 1960, the compact diesel engine line was announced for production in medium-duty IH trucks. These engines would also become the smaller diesel options for the famed Loadstar line as well.

While all of this was happening, IH was gearing up for its next generation of light-duty pickups. The C-Line was designed to bring more carlike comforts to the working truck experience. IH was working on trucks with splashes of chrome, fake wood on the dash, vinyl floormats, sun visors, armrests, and a dome light. Plunking down more money got you carpet and padded door cards. Well, these were still trucks, after all, but nicer trucks.

Filling in the lineup alongside the C-Line was the Scout, the Travelall, and the Travelette. In 1959, IH was finalizing what it wanted in the C-Line when it decided to test its new diesel engines in the light trucks. IH found out that it didn’t take much to make the light trucks diesel. Pretty much the biggest change seen by a driver was the addition of a glow plug button. IH seemed pretty satisfied with the truck, as did its Foreign Operations unit. However, by 1961 IH determined that there wasn’t enough demand in the light truck market for a diesel.

However, IH didn’t give up on diesel. The C-Line was launched in 1960 for the 1961 model year. It’s believed that a test mule was built in 1962. There was also an unknown number of diesel-powered Travelalls sold in Scandinavia in 1963. American buyers were able to buy a production C-Line truck with a D301 diesel six between 1963 and 1968. Sadly, since IH wasn’t confident in the diesel market it never put the diesel in official literature. Instead, the diesel engine was a secret menu item that you had to know about in order to buy.

For example, click here for the brochure for IH’s 1963 light-duty trucks where you’ll find diesel isn’t mentioned at all.

Because of this, it’s not known just how many IH C-Line trucks were sold with a D301. It’s believed that as few as 19 were built in 1968. The highest known engine number is 8070, but that just means how many D301s were built by that point in 1968, not how many light-duty trucks were built. Either way, we aren’t talking huge numbers here.

As far as naming goes, IH C-Line trucks started with the C-100 half-ton and ended with the C-130 1-ton. Somewhat confusingly, the name range changed to C-900 to C-1300 in 1963. It’s believed the diesels were available in C-1100 to C-1300 trucks. It’s unknown how much extra cost the diesel would have added.

Buyers of these trucks got a diesel six with 301 cubic inches on deck and produced 112.5 HP and 228 lb-ft of torque. Now, yes, power figures like that would be pathetic for a truck today, but these numbers were pretty healthy back in 1963. Of course, the main advantage of a diesel back then was fuel economy. But because IH never officially advertised these trucks it’s unclear how much better these diesels were.

The Other First

If you ignore the test mules, International Harvester might not be the first to put a diesel in a production light truck.

Information is thin on the ground, but Curbside Classic found a copy of a trade journal indicating that Dodge started putting British diesel engines in trucks in as early as 1962.

At the time, Dodge was in bed with England’s Perkins Engines Company to supply it with diesel engines for passenger cars and trucks in Europe. However, like International Harvester, Chrysler brass thought Americans would like the taste of the fuel savings offered by diesel. Keep in mind that back in those days diesel fuel was dirt cheap. The tradeoff was that most diesel engines of the era were low on power, loud, and would make a modern NVH engineer faint.

Saving money was pretty much the name of the game here, as indicated by the 1962 Commercial Motor trade journal:

Mr. P. N. Buckminster, Dodge assistant general manager, announcing in Detroit the introduction of the Perkins engines, said: “The 6.354 engine is ideal for truck operators in the local, .short-haul delivery field. It is designed specifically to provide outstanding performance and maximum fuel economy in city and suburban delivery service, involving start-and-stop driving.

“We have had a very close association with Perkins for several years through our British truck building operation, and thousands of Perkins diesels are being used in our trucks throughout the British Commonwealth, Europe and the Far East,” added Mr. Buckminster. “Perkins products have proved widely acceptable and enjoy an outstanding reputation around the world. We feel certain they will be as popular with American truck operators as they have been in the overseas market.”

Among the many advantages which Dodge say operators of the new diesel trucks will gain are the lower cost of diesel fuel in most States, a low initial purchase price compared with conventional diesel units, and outstanding fuel economy of 12 to 17 m.p.g. in pick-up and delivery service. […] The compact size and weight of the Perkins unit will enable it to be installed in the same basic chassis as a petrol engine, which will facilitate repowering of existing models.

The interesting thing about the Dodge Perkins units is that most of them went into Dodge D400 through Dodge PC600 medium-duty trucks. However, there was one exception to this. The Perkins 6.354 was also fitted into at least some W300 Power Wagon trucks.

Externally, the only difference between the gas trucks and their diesel brethren was a tiny diesel badge under the Dodge logo on the fenders. If you checked option code 28-01A when ordering, you got that truck with the Perkins diesel and paid an additional $908.90 for the privilege.

This engine was actually competitive against the IH unit. As its name might suggest if you’re looking hard enough, the Perkins 6.354 had six cylinders and it was a 354 cubic inch mill producing a respectable 120 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque. Well, it was respectable for a light-duty truck. Remember, both Dodge and IH put their small diesels into rather big trucks, where the power figures shown would have made for some incredible slugs clogging up America’s byways.

Lewin has done some research on the Perkins W300 in the past and it’s a ridiculously rare truck. It’s so rare that the images I’m using here are of gas trucks because the diesels essentially don’t exist anymore. From Lewin:

However, there is at least one W300 out there featuring this engine. If you’re unfamiliar, that’s the four-wheel-drive version of the D Series. As covered on Sweptline.com, that truck currently has a bed, but was originally equipped for pulling horses. Thus, it’s not clear if this was an early qualifier for the first American diesel pickup, given it wasn’t really a mainstream offering.

I’ve also found one other example of a W300 that the owner claims as having the Perkins engine. My research suggests the Perkins diesel may have been a special order option. That is, you could have one if you really wanted one in the W300 and D400. In any case, the Perkins diesel wasn’t marketed for pickups in any way that I’ve seen, and the D Series quickly moved on. It wasn’t really a serious attempt by Dodge to establish diesel engines for mainstream pickup trucks.

According to the book, Standard Catalog Of American Light-Duty Trucks by John Gunnell, Dodge made approximately 1,000 of these Perkins-equipped W300s starting in the spring of 1962. If true, that explains why so few have survived to the modern day.  The Power Wagon was marketed as a truck for hard work. It’s unsurprising that only two examples are known to survive today, one of them is shown in the video above.

Technically, Dodge did a light-duty pickup truck first, but its effort is so poorly documented that it almost doesn’t exist. However, it does appear that International Harvester was experimenting with putting diesels into pickup trucks first. The International Harvester diesel was also available in a smaller truck while the diesel option for the Dodge started at a 1-ton. Further confusing things is the fact that Studebaker started putting Detroit Diesel three-cylinder 3D-53 powerplants in 1-ton trucks during 1963. It’s believed that International Harvester and Dodge were first, but apparently not by long.

However, it does appear that at the very least, these trucks planted the seeds for the future we live in today. International Harvester and Dodge both proved that diesel technology did work in pickup trucks. Sadly, there just wasn’t a market for it yet. You could also argue that diesels needed more time in the oven. The diesel pickup didn’t really become mainstream in America until Cummins and International Harvester produced engines that had mountains of power and rock-hard reliability to match their thrifty fuel economy. But these trucks had to start somewhere, and over six decades ago these two trucks helped get things going.