BERLIET Truck PDF Manuals

Above on the page there're some Service PDF Manuals for BERLIET Trucks.

The Berliet firm of Lyon, the most famous and prestigious French manufacturer of trucks, was one of the largest suppliers of its products to the national armed forces.

The merit of their creation belongs to the talented designer Marius Berliet, who developed the project of his first passenger car back in 1893.

His company began manufacturing trucks in 1906, and by the beginning of the WW1, it already offered 32 models of trucks, most of which were used in general transportation in the army.

At that time, a 35-horsepower Berliet CBA truck with a gearbox in a block with a rear axle became the main army vehicle.

With constant modifications, it was produced until 1932 and then participated in the hostilities of May-June 1940.

Thanks to the great intuition of Marius Berliet, already in the 1920s, his company began designing a series of special army vehicles with new gasoline and diesel power units, and in the 1930s, experimental all-wheel drive all-terrain vehicles and small batches of armored vehicles were created at Berliet, but in the French army, they all turned out to be unclaimed.

The most common military product of Berliet was a successful family of diesel vehicles of the GD series with a carrying capacity of 5-7 tons.

Its first representative, adopted in 1934, was the Berliet GDM truck with a 6-cylinder diesel engine and a 4-speed gearbox with overdrive, and the most famous in the French army was the GDR bonneted vehicle with a payload capacity of 5-6 tons with an all-metal cab and various overhead valve 4- and cylinder diesel engines, which finally replaced the famous Berliet CBA truck series in the army.

With the first salvos of WWII, Berliet's hopes of receiving new state orders for trucks and armored vehicles did not come true.

On the contrary, in September 1939, his factories were confiscated in order to organize the production of shells there, but Marius Berliet refused to comply with this decision and continued to manufacture trucks.

After the occupation of France, the head plant Berliet in Lyon remained in the free southern part of the country and until April 1944 produced 24 thousand trucks, mainly of the GDR series, which in various ways fell into the hands of the occupying forces and the acting Nazi army.

After the devastating American bombardment on May 1, 1944, the Berliet factory was badly damaged and suspended its activities.