History
In 1947, Vic Barclay, Mac Billingsley and Claude Thick – three former employees of the Hayes Manufacturing Company, which was a truck-building company – established their truck-building shop, Pacific Truck & Trailer. Initially based on a shipping wharf at West Coast Shipyards on False Creek, in 1948 it moved to Franklin Street, East Vancouver. In 1967 it moved to North Vancouver. By then, the company had manufactured 350 trucks and many trailers. Pacific was well regarded for their hand-built quality and ability to respond to custom requests. In 1970, the business was sold to International Harvester (IH). IH managed worldwide sales, but left Pacific the design and manufacture of the products; however, some of the Pacific models featured International cabins. [1]
In 1981, IH sold Pacific Truck & Trailer to Inchcape Berhad, which was located in Singapore. In October 1991, the last Pacific truck was built and the manufacturing plant was closed and torn down, with only the parts department left in operation in Vancouver. In 1994, the remnants of the company were sold to Crane Carrier Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. In the summer of 1995 the Vancouver depot built the last Pacific Truck in the back of their parts warehouse. A hand-built 100 ton capacity ore tractor, model P12W3. Crane continued until 2002, which sold the Pacific name, intellectual property, and rights to Coast Powertrain of New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Coast Powertrain makes OEM parts and sub-assemblies for old Pacific trucks under the name Pacific Truck Manufacturing. [1]
