Founded in 1905 by William Pigott as the Seattle Car Manufacturing Company, the firm started out making railroad cars. It later got in and out of buses, structural steel and other manufacturing fields, but has stayed in the truck-making sector since buying Kenworth in 1945.

The Bellevue-Washington-based Paccar ranks No. 2 in truck sales in North America, but it boasts the best profit margins in the industry because it can get a premium price on its Peterbilts and Kenworths, considered top of the line when new and a great value for resale.

Led by Chairman and CEO Mark Pigott, the founder's great grandson and second CEO in the past 40 years, the $16.4 billion company relies on technology to keep ahead of the game. In fact, Pigott benchmarks his company against Microsoft for information technology and against Dell for custom manufacturing. (Toyota's Lexus is Paccar's benchmark for design and quality.)

Some 1,600 computers are stationed on the company's assembly lines, and tablet PCs and Wi-Fi networks are common. Customers can make thousands of choices for truck components by computer at the dealer level and expect delivery from one of Paccar's factories, furnished with automatic and robotic equipment, in about two months.

Lately, many of those options have tended toward fuel economy. In 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency recognized Paccar for aerodynamic redesigns and improved engine efficiency in some Kenworth and Peterbilt models that result in fuel savings of 10% to 20%.

Conventional hybrid technology that uses a vehicle's brakes to charge batteries will be put into Paccar's medium-duty trucks that go to market in 2008. Those charged batteries power electric motors used during acceleration that can cut fuel use by 30% in stop-and-go city driving.

Further, Paccar is developing a hybrid power technology for its long-haul heavy-duty trucks that eliminates the need to idle the engine during rest stops to power the cab's heating and cooling systems. Considering that trucks idle an average 1,860 hours per year, that represents an 8% savings in fuel efficiency.

There's more to Paccar's success than its devotion to technology. Company executives are known for following business cycles in the trucking industry and the economy at large. This awareness averts costly inventory in economic downturns but enables a quick ramp up when the picture improves.

That was particularly helpful this year, for instance, when federal emission regulations went into effect. Truck demand was high in 2006 in anticipation of the changes, but dropped in 2007 as the restrictions drove up truck prices. Paccar anticipated those changes in the US and cut production accordingly. Further, it benefited from higher sales in the European Union (now its largest market) of DAF trucks, which it acquired in 1996.

Other US companies that attain high standards through use of technology in business:
3M - commercial products
Dow Chemical - chemicals
International Business Machines - computers
Johnson & Johnson - health care
Motorola - electronics
Proctor & Gamble - consumer products