When you find two 1980 trucks with sequential VIN numbers and both have super low mileage, you want to learn more. But, while researching these trucks, along with the two men who now own them, the guy who ordered them, and the company he still works for, I found a lot of history worth preserving.
The trucks are now owned by Lee Kinzer and Dave Marciel, both from the Sacramento area of California, and both have interesting stories to tell. The trucks were ordered by a gentleman named Jim Staas, who has worked for an outfit called Siller Bros. out of Yuba City, CA for his entire adult life – over 67 years – and both Jim and Siller Bros. have stories worth telling, as well.
Andy and Chuck Siller, two of six brothers and six sisters, dropped out of high school to start logging in 1947, and Siller Bros. was born. In 1958, they incorporated, and their brother Neil joined the fun. At that time, Andy and Chuck each owned 40% of the company and Neil, who brought his trucks to the operation, owned the remaining 20%.
This company is still active today, but a lot has changed. Starting out as a logging operation, they also had several mills over the years and, at one point, owned 20,000 acres of timber. Later, they got into farming (rice, walnuts, almonds, peaches, and prunes), owning and managing as much as 10,000 acres of farmland, and even started an aviation division with helicopters and Sky Cranes when environmentalists began forcing logging companies to “not disturb” the land they were logging.
While still in college, Jim Staas (now 85) joined the company in 1958, working out in the logging fields, as a tail hooker under the shuttle in the day, and driving a water truck off highway at night. After graduating, the brothers signed off on his commercial license, and he began driving a log truck. The first new truck Siller Bros. ever bought was a 1955 Kenworth, and they still own it today. The company bought their first new Peterbilt log truck in 1961 for Jim, and after that, they only bought Peterbilts (Jim got a new one every two years). In 1976, they made Jim the Truck Boss, and then at some point he became Operations Manager, which is still his title today.
Talking to Jim, who has a wealth of knowledge and is still sharp as a tack, was awesome. And, if he doesn’t know the answer to your question, he has logs and journals he can go through to get it. Jim still lives on the same property in Marysville, CA where he was born. The house he was born in and grew up in was built in 1903. He had to tear it down a few years ago and build a new house, because termites had taken over the old place. Born in 1940 and starting at Siller Bros. when he was 18 years old, besides a stint in the military, Jim has spent his entire adult life at Siller Bros. These days, he still goes in the office every day for a few hours to make sure things are going smoothly, but most of his focus now is on putting together the history of the company he gave his life to.
These sequentially numbered 1980 Peterbilt 353s were ordered by Jim as glider kits at the end of 1979, picked up from the factory in Newark, CA in January 1980, then hauled back to Yuba City. The 353 model was introduced in 1973 as a construction-oriented variant of the model 359, eventually replacing the model 341 and heavy duty versions of the model 351. When the Newark assembly plant closed in 1986, that same year, the company revised their entire vocational lineup and one of these changes was replacing the model 353 with the model 357.
Longtime mechanic Vern Paquette (who was with the company for 57 years before retiring and then passing away) was tasked with installing the drivetrains in these matching trucks. Detroits were popular then, so both trucks got 318-hp 8V-71s, 5+4 two-stick transmissions, and heavy duty rears. Both had butterfly hoods and were painted in the Siller colors (red and Croyden Cream), and both were fitted with custom built 4,000-gallon water tanks. But here is where things got interesting.
Due to several factors including a divorce in the family, an economic downturn, and pressure to unionize the company, co-founder and brother Chuck Siller separated from Siller Bros. These new 1980 Peterbilt 353s, along with much of the fleet, were put into a nearby barn on brother Neil’s ranch, where they sat side by side for years and were not used. Most of the fleet was slowly put back into service over the next few years as the economy improved, but these two 1980 Peterbilt 353s were kept in the barn. In fact, one of them was never put into service, and the other did not start getting used until October of 1997.
The truck that was put into service in 1997 was used very little over the next 18 years, and mostly just on fires. The 318 Detroit in it always had a high-idle issue and it never ran right, so it was replaced in May 2015 with a 3406 CAT engine. Unfortunately, an inexperienced driver over-wound it coming down off a hill and blew it up almost immediately. From there, it was parked again, and in January of 2018 the water tank was removed and put on another truck. Then, in June of 2020, Lee Kinzer bought the truck – which only had 4,200 miles on it – and a blown motor!
An interesting guy himself, Lee Kinzer (69) has a bit of history with Siller Bros. that dates back to 1969. Born in 1956 and growing up in Tennessee, Lee got into some trouble when he was 13 years old, so his dad sent him to a reform school for boys in Dobbins, CA. While there, he would see the Siller Bros. trucks driving past, and he always liked the way they looked. After spending a year at “Mr. A’s Boys World” getting reformed, which he did, he went on to attend schools in West Virginia and then Florida, but at age 16, he decided to drop out and go to work with his father doing construction. But what he really wanted to do was drive a truck.
Since nobody would hire him in Tennessee to drive a truck because of his age, Lee decided to move to California in 1976 and try his luck there, saying, “That’s where all the Peterbilts were!” And, as luck would have it, he got a job the first week there, driving an orange 1957 cabover Peterbilt lumber truck with a big bore 250 Cummins and a 4+4 set of sticks, for a man in San Bernardino, CA. Later, he switched to driving a 1977 Peterbilt transfer in Southern California, then he went log trucking for Golden Bear Logging, and then he pulled an end dump with a ‘67 Peterbilt. Then, for the next ten years or so, he drove for Antonini Enterprises in Stockton, CA, hauling various commodities. In 1990, he found himself at Siller Bros. where it all began when he was a teenager.
Driving for Siller Bros. until 2004, shortly after co-founder Andy Siller died in 2003, Lee was feeling a bit burned out. Lee actually drove one of the water trucks in 2003 – the one he would later purchase – to a fire. At that time, the Detroit engine was still in the truck, and it only had 2,100 miles on the odometer. After leaving Siller Bros. Lee went on to work at Sierra Pacific for a few years, and then ended up at Ramos Oil, where he spent the last 16 years of his driving career hauling fuel and oil in tankers, and such. Now retired, Lee loves tinkering with old trucks and has done a few full restorations, including a 1954 Peterbilt Bubblenose, a rare 1938 Fageol, and a narrow-nose 1974 Peterbilt 351. These trucks, along with others, were sold, but today he still has three notable trucks including a 2-axle 1955 narrow-nose Peterbilt, a 3-axle 1972 Peterbilt daycab, and the 1980 Peterbilt 353 he bought from Siller Bros.
In 2005, after Neil Siller passed away, his widow Kay ended up with the ranch and some of the trucks – including the other Peterbilt 353 water truck that was never used. All the Siller trucks and equipment that were being stored on Neil’s ranch were moved to their yard in Yuba City, and that is where Lee found and purchased his Peterbilt 353 in June of 2020. After it sat in his yard for about two years, Lee went to work on the truck and spent 1.5 years working on the “restoration” – although it really didn’t need to be restored, it just needed to be cleaned up. He did, however, take it down to just bare frame rails and the front suspension and then sandblasted and repainted everything.
Pulling the blown motor and the 18-speed transmission Siller Bros. had put behind the CAT engine, Lee found and bought a 400 Cummins out of a 1975 Kenworth and then installed a two-stick 6+4 setup in the truck. Wanting the old vocational Peterbilt to ride smoother, he bought a single-axle air-ride cutoff from a 2016 Peterbilt and replaced the stiff dual axle rear spring suspension the truck originally came with. The wheelbase was extended a bit, but the overall length of the truck remained the same. He then bought and installed a 20-foot Morgan flatbed, that might allow him to one day haul a car or a golf cart, but it also added weight to rear of the truck, which made it ride even better. After a fresh paint job in the Siller colors but with a slightly different scheme, the truck was ready to enjoy and take to some shows.
One of Lee’s friends is also a fan of old trucks – particularly rare trucks that have been kept original – and the other Peterbilt 353 surely fit that description. Dave Marciel (60) of Herald, CA has been a mechanic at the Detroit Diesel distributor/shop in Sacramento, CA since 1985. Working on Detroit engines (and other brands) for the past 40 years, Dave is very comfortable wrenching on these older motors. When he heard about this unused Peterbilt 353, he asked Lee to set up an appointment with Neil’s widow Kay to go see it, but they couldn’t get her to answer the phone. So, one day they just went to the ranch, and lo and behold, she was there, and they got to go into the barn and see the truck.
Obviously, the batteries were dead, and the roll-up door on the barn didn’t work, so they couldn’t start the truck or pull it outside. A few weeks later, the guys went out there again, but this time Dave brought some fresh batteries and his welder to fix the roll-up door. After getting the door open and the truck fired up and rolled out of the barn, Dave made Kay a deal right then and there, and then Lee drove it back to Dave’s place, about 105 miles away, without any problems. There isn’t much to say about Dave’s truck because nothing has ever been changed – it is 100% original, including the 318 Detroit, the 5+4 transmission, the water tank, and the Siller Bros. paint scheme – it is all original from 1980.
The truck only had 633 miles on it when Dave bought it, and the only reason it had any miles on it was because Neil would take it the Siller shop once every few years to have it serviced and change the oil, and that shop was about 30 miles away. Since buying the old Peterbilt last year, Dave has spent a lot of time cleaning it up, but that is all he has done to it, and all he ever plans to do to it. From here on out, for any shows he takes the truck to, he will haul it there on a trailer, because he wants the mileage to stay in the triple digits.
I was pleased and privileged that these two men brought out their trucks and allowed me to shoot them together in Turlock, CA last September (2025) at the Soza Memorial Truck Show. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with these gentlemen, and they were kind enough to even let us do a livestream video of the trucks and their owners while at the show. You can find that on our YouTube channel (Ten Four Magazine).
No stranger to neat old rides, Dave has a few other “original” trucks, too, like a baby blue 1975 Ext. Hood Peterbilt 359 with white stripes and a 12V-71 Detroit, 5+4 transmissions, a 36” sleeper, and factory air-ride. Others include (2) dark blue 1976 Ext. Hood Peterbilts – a 2-axle with a big KTA 600 and a 3-axle with a KTA 450 – both equipped with 13-speed transmissions, along with a yellow and black V8 CAT powered 1980 Ext. Hood Peterbilt 359 with two-sticks, a cabover Freightliner with a 12V-71 Detroit, and many others. As mentioned before, Dave likes his trucks to be factory stock, without any changes or add-ons, which made the low-mileage 1980 Peterbilt 353 very fitting for his collection.
The last remaining co-founder of the company, Chuck Siller, passed away in December of 2023. Today, the operation is owned and ran by Tommy Siller, Neil’s son, and Andrew Jansen, Andy’s grandson. The logging portion of the business has been downsized, and farming now dominates most of their operation, covering about 5,000 acres, with much of it being rice. Over the years, they sold some of their vast amounts of land, but today they are in the process of buying much of it back. The helicopter division, which started in 1975 as Siller Bros. Aviation, came about because environmentalists didn’t want the ground to get trampled through traditional logging practices. Eventually becoming Siller Helicopters, the scope of their aviation work came to include firefighting and construction, along with the logging. They sold this division last year to Helicopter Express in Georgia.
I would like to thank Lee Kinzer, Dave Marciel, and Jim Staas for talking to me several times over the past few weeks and sharing their stories with me. Jim hired and trained his replacement, Chris Witman, who is currently the Truck Boss at Siller Bros. but is set to take Jim’s position when Jim finally decides to completely retire or his health doesn’t allow him to work. Lee’s truck currently has about 4,800 miles on it, and Dave’s has about 850, making these two Peterbilt 353s rare finds. Preserving history is important, and the older I get, the more I understand why.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Lee Kinzer, Jim Staas, and Dave Marciel for providing all the vintage photos.