While Kenworth today is synonymous with heavy duty semi trucks, very little is known about their buses, and it's almost forgotten that at one time, Kenworth was a major player in the transit and school bus industry. In fact, bus production was a mainstay at Kenworth for much of the company's early years, and at one time was the company's most lucrative form of business.

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The company known as Kenworth today began in 1905 in the repair shops of the Gerlinger Motor Car Company, then located in Portland, Oregon. Edward and Louis Gerlinger were promoters of Federal Truck and owned a dealership in Portland selling several long forgotten makes of automobile. Their shop, one of three in Portland, employed five men in a rented two-story building that served as their headquarters. Amidst a rising trend in auto ownership, the Gerlingers founded a second agency in downtown Seattle in 1913. Due to the primitive roads of the Pacific Northwest back then, and the fact that most trucks prior to World War I were considered light-duty, their Federal truck had a difficult time selling in the Pacific Northwest.

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In November 1914, in order to keep the shop mechanics and employees employed with the company, the Gerlingers consented at the request of a machinist to build an experimental truck that would otherwise be an improvement over the Federal. Using his knowledge, and the fact that the Federal needed constant repairs, he set out to build a more stronger truck supplied with a bigger six cylinder engine. The new vehicle would bear the combination of the company name, and the type of engine. The new product would now be called "Gersix."

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The first Gersix , completed in 1915, sold to a brick hauler, and after a second sale, a Tacoma furniture manufacturer from Tacoma offered the Gerlingers an empty building in exchange for stock in the promising company. The two accepted.

Early in 1916, the operation, including a third - and partially completed - truck trekked from Portland to Tacoma to set up shop. The Seattle agency also moved, at the same time, to a single story brick building rented by Seattle financier Edgar K. Worthington. Despite lavish promotion of Gerlinger Motor Car Company, the firm went bankrupt in early 1917. Edward Gerlinger departed, leaving Louis to sell the remains to Worthington and a Seattle ship captain, Captain F. A. Keen.

Worthington had previously involved himself in several financial ventures in the Seattle area, and by 1917, he was able to claim presidency of two investment firms. One was a tug and barge company, the other was a timber and logging operation. F.A. Keen maintained an avid interest in both investments, and the two believed that the barely surviving motor car company could be a new source of financial contracts.

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In 1919, the focus shifted to Seattle, having sold somewhat less than 100 trucks while in Tacoma. By now, the 65-year-old F.A. Keen was ready to retire. A younger Worthington investment associate would fill the role vacated role left by Keen. The new associate, Harry Kent, was the Vice President and Treasurer of Todd Dry Dock in Seattle. Two other men, William Balcom of Balcom Lumber Company and T. M. Jenner would buy out the remaining shares.

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Formatively, it was impossible to separate bus from truck production, and only spotty records exist of company orders during the mid 1920s. Trucks and buses of this era were built by building up purchased components to a complete chassis, then shipping the whole to a body builder to finish up the work. A bus chassis was simply an elongated truck chassis, with a strenghtened frame and lengthened wheelbase. Their main customers, when they commenced bus production in the 1920s, were predominantly school districts in the Puget Sound area.

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By now, the company was on the brink of a new era. Population densities were shifting towards urban centers, resulting in newer and more improved roads in both cities and rural areas together. The need for both products and people to travel emphasized a high improtance for improved transportation. To take advantage of these new opportunities, Gersix reorganized and recapitalized itself, on $60,000 capital. Kent and Worthington, who were the principal stockholders, renamed the company Kenworth Motor Truck Company after themselves in January 1923. In March of that year, they moved to a new manufacturing facility and began planning new models for the following model year.

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When the company was known as Gerlinger Motor Car Works, their first two full-chassis vehicles ironically were school buses based on the Gersix truck chassis. In 1926, Kenworth developed a chassis specifically for school and transit bus operators, known as the BU. The BU model sported a wheelbase of 212 inches that was expanded two more inches in 1927, and could be fitted with bodies ranging from 21 to 29 passengers. The BU model also heralded the return of the Buda six-cylinder engine, and remained the company's principal offering through 1931. The new model became so popular in the Pacific Northwest that production rose from 99 units in 1927 and 127 units in 1927, to 230 units by 1930. By that time, the predominant number of BU models produced were sent to school bus body builders, and were built for use in school districts throughout the Seattle and Puget Sound area of Washington State.

Kenworth continued expanding into bus production throughout the 1930s, despite the Great Depression being a major influence. To assist Kenworth's 80 factory workers - who were idled by the Depression, the company undertook a bold move by introducing a new line of buses in August of 1932. Known as the KHC-22 (Kenworth - Heiser - City), the 23-passenger bus was developed by Kenworth engineers as a stock demo vehicle to help aid a glum sales picture, and to jumpstart the local economy. At a time of mild economic recovery, the KHC22 proved to be very popular and sparked a renewed interest in Kenworth buses. Major operators of the KHC-22 (later expanded to a 225-inch wheelbase, 33-passenger KHC-33, in September of 1933) were the Portland Traction Company of Portland, Oregon, and Spokane United Railways.

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In that year, Kenworth also released its most popular and successful line of transit bus, a conventional styled bus based off of their Model 86 heavy duty truck. Powered by a Hercules JXCM engine, the model 870 as it was known, would soon be replaced by a model 871, which became Kenworth's standard line of buses throughout the early and mid 1930s. Experiments with "deck-and-a-half" buses would soon follow, as well as the company's very first experiments with rear-engine coach-type buses in 1936.

Production of Kenworth buses continued throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s, and during this time Kenworth was manufacturing bus chassis for body builders such as Wentworth and Irwin (later renamed Wentwin), and Heiser. Heiser, long an often chosen body for school buses bearing Kenworth chassis, would later be purchased by Pacific Car and Foundry Company in 1937.

Kenworth changed its production line early in 1939, reflecting a desire to remain "in tune" with market forces. The conventional bus chassis, which had become poor sellers, were dropped altogether, and Kenworth focused its designs on more transit or "coach-type" buses with engines being located either underfloor or at the back of the bus.

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By this time, Kenworth was a major force in transit bus production, and nearly every major transit company in the Pacific Northwest were running Kenworth buses. Seattle Municipal Railway purchased several new model 601s to replace the previous model H30s, which were powered by a Hall-Scott 135 engine underfloor and had bodies built by the Pacific Car and Foundry Company. Kenworth also built a model 612, which became the company's most widely distributed underfloor coach. 27 were built with 14 wheelbase variations (and seven engine variations), and all 27 were sold by as many as 15 different operators.

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At the onset of World War II, Kenworth's bus production waned again, but Kenworth was able to remain afloat due to the fact that orders were now larger than before. This was possible because the early effects of the war forced the amalgamation of several smaller, more regional operators into larger, territorial ones. These conditions meant more bus orders for Kenworth, only there were fewer buyers. Bremerton Transit purchased several buses in 1940 to accommodate the increase in ridership due to the preparations for the war itself.

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In the face of these conditions, Kenworth still maintained production at about 40 units annually. In 1940, Seattle Municipal Railway purchased 30 buses in a single order, assisting Kenworth in breaking a production record. With low volume production, Kenworth was more than willing to build special order coaches. Gray Line affiliates Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver purchased several of these special coach orders known as Grayliner or Grayliner Junior buses, and the bodies for these buses were all built by PC&F.; When wartime ensued, Kenworth found itself once again focusing its efforts towards war production, producing troop transports and a number of military variations of their commercial truck line.

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Near the end of World War II, the company would become part of the Pacific Car and Foundry Company. In 1944, the passing of Kenworth president Philip Johnson meant that the major stockholders, the widows of Johnson, and Kenworth founders Kent and Worthington - could sell their controlling shares and stake of the company. Foreseeing a drastic downturn at war's end, Kenworth and PC&F; believed bus production would play a pivotal role in jumpstarting the economy. It also saw an opportunity to hire former military truck and aircraft workers, and began a major push of four primary postwar models set to be relaunched in 1946.

The postwar Kenworth buses were part of a small group that included small intercity or interurban buses, dubbed the model K; a trolley coach known as the model E; a city transit bus known as the model N; and a model W - an intercity bus. Ironically, the choice of model designations derived from the first four letters of the name KENWorth. Later on, a one-door transit bus dubbed the Model O and a prototype school bus dubbed the model T, which was the early forerunner of nearly 3000 model CT and LR buses produced by Kenworth from 1949 to 1957.

The Model K and Model W buses looked quite similar, but all similarities ended there. The differences were their length, side window design, and the choices of available engines. The model W had a pancake underfloor Hall-Scott 190 engine, while the K was powered by an International Red Diamond RD450 in the rear of the bus. The shorter model K was capable of hauling 25-33 passengers, while its bigger brethren could haul anywhere between 31 and 41 passengers depending on configuration. The Model N, as announced, would have seated 36 to 44 passengers in an underfloor engine configuration, but in 1947 it was downsized to a 32 to 36 passenger bus when the original design found no takers. After 1947, Kenworth began assigning numerals to the model designations to signify evolutionary variants in the design.

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As production orders for the interurban model Ks and model Ws waned, Kenworth focused its attention on special orders including an order of 10 "Brucks" for Great Northern Railroad in Montana, (an earlier version was built for Northern Pacific Transport, but was a split-level coach) and several Highway Post Office coaches. These "special order coaches" were based off of the model T school bus, which entered production in early 1949, after additionally test-marketing a small 20-passenger bus known as the Carcoach (only one was built, but none entered full production).

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The Model T school bus, which entered production after the last Bruck was built for Great Northern in April of 1949, was an immediate hit with many school bus operators in the Pacific Northwest. The T-126 as it was known, boasted a unique four-pane windshield that offered unheralded forward visibility in any school bus at the time, and was the first school bus ever built to feature a roof escape hatch. Production of the T-126 averaged over 375 buses per year, making it Kenworth's most lucrative bus offering in the company's history up to that time. Shortly after its launch, Kenworth renamed the line the model CT. The model CT also came in several varying passenger capacities ranging from 55, 61, 67, 73, and 79 passengers. The model CT "Pacific School Coach" was powered by an International Red Diamond 450 inline six-cylinder gas engine placed at the rear of the bus, and a LeRoi H540 engine was made available for an LR-73 model that was produced in August of 1950. Some orders for modified model CTs were made available and sold internationally, with variants being sold to Uruguay and Venezuela, as well as the Middle East.

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After the boon of bus production ended, and to focus more on truck production due to a rising number of heavy duty truck orders, all bus production was shifted from Kenworth over to Pacific Car and Foundry in the middle of 1956. After some final cleanup, PC&F; wound up completely outstanding orders for the Pacific School Coach in early 1957. Shortly afterwards, PC&F; sold all rights, tooling, and equipment to Gillig Bros., a school bus manufacturer based in Hayward California. Gillig would later incorporate many designs of the model CT "Pacific School Coach" into their own Transit Coach line of school buses, starting with the 501- and C-series models in 1958 and 1959, respectively.