PeterbiLt 352/363
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“It was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June, In a Kenworth pullin’ logs, A Cabover Pete with a reefer on, And a Jimmy haulin’ hogs.”
Mercy, snakes alive, Good Buddy, when CW McCall (aka Bill Fries) penned Convoy in 1975, you could have bet your rubber ducky the Pete he was referring to was a Peterbilt 352. Nicknamed The Pacemaker, it had a tilting cab, and had replaced the non-tilting 351 in the late 50s. Superseded by the 362 in 1981, the two became symbols for everything that was American trucking in the 70s and 80s, and appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, including Knight Rider. Alas, the iconic COE eventually fell victim to the American preference for trucks with bonnets (in America, they’re called hoods, and the ubiquitous joke is that this feature is an extension of a driver’s, ahem, manhood). Sadly the 362, offered with a 305hp-430hp engine (mainly from Cat or Cummins), convoyed off into the sunset in 2005. (PR)