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# The Story Behind: The Levi's Trucker Jacket
- URL: https://www.unknowndivide.com/story-behind-levis-trucker-jacket-history/
- Published: 2026-11-04T14:57:49.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-04T14:57:49.000Z
- Description: The Levi's Trucker jacket was sketched on a notepad in 1961, but its story starts with the Triple Pleat Blouse of the 1870s. Here is how Type I, Type II and Type III got their names, and why Japanese collectors called it the Trucker.
- Author: unknowndivide staff
- Tags: Style, Design, The Story Behind

Pull a denim jacket off almost any rack in the world and you are probably holding a copy of one drawing. It was sketched on a notepad at Levi Strauss & Co. in 1961, and the company now calls it the Trucker. The **Levi's Trucker jacket** is so common that the name gets used for every jean jacket, which the company's own historian says is wrong. The real story starts almost a century before the Trucker existed.

This is the first entry in our Story Behind series, where we look at objects that refused to go out of style. Future entries, and the rest of our design history coverage, live on our [Design Icons](https://www.unknowndivide.com/design-icons/) page.

## Levi's Trucker Jacket History Starts in the 1870s

According to the company's own [heritage team](https://www.levistrauss.com/2023/10/17/trucker-or-non-trucker/?ref=unknowndivide.com), Levi Strauss & Co. made the first riveted denim jacket in the 1870s. It was called the Triple Pleat Blouse. It was boxy, with two riveted pockets low on the front, riveted sleeve openings and three pleats down the front, which is where the name came from.

By the 1890s the Triple Pleat had given way to the XX Blouse and the Lot 506\. That 506 is the jacket collectors now call the Type I, and it stayed on the market until 1953\. It kept the boxy cut and the rivets, but carried one riveted chest pocket and two pleats instead of three. There was a blanket lined version for cold weather and pocket flaps, which were removed during the Second World War.

## Levi's Type II Jacket, 1953

In 1953 the Lot 507 replaced it. Now known as the Type II, it ran until 1961 and still looked like a work jacket: boxy, two pleats, riveted cuffs, and a choice of back cinch or side adjusters at the waist. The official [Levi's FAQ](https://www.levi.com/US/en%5FUS/features/general-faq?ref=unknowndivide.com) on dating vintage jackets points to the Type II as the point where the second chest pocket and flaps arrived along with button tabs at the waist. If you have ever seen a jacket with two flap pockets, pleats on the front and adjusters at the hem, that is the shape.

It is also a jacket the company still makes. The current [1953 Type II jacket](https://www.levi.com/US/en%5FUS/clothing/men/outerwear/1953-type-ii-selvedge-denim-trucker-jacket/p/705070066?ref=unknowndivide.com) from Levi's Vintage Clothing is cut in rigid selvedge denim, carries a Two Horse lot 507 patch, double pleated front, waist adjusters and the Big E red Tab, and is made in Japan. That last detail matters for reasons we will get to.

## Jack Lucier and the 557 Type III

The jacket that became the Trucker first showed up in the October to December 1961 catalog as the Lot 557\. Levi's historian Tracey Panek [tells the story](https://www.levistrauss.com/2024/03/03/a-roundup-of-truckers-in-the-levis-archives/?ref=unknowndivide.com) of how designer Jack Lucier, who visited the company archive in 2016 to share it, drew the jacket on a notepad. He threw out two things that had defined Levi's jackets since the 1870s: the pleats and the copper rivets. In their place he drew two pointed seams running down from the chest pockets to the waistband, which gave a symmetrical, tapered shape to what had always been a boxy garment.

There is a family detail here worth knowing. Jack's father, Chris Lucier, created the red Tab, the small strip of fabric on the back pocket of Levi's jeans that the company introduced in 1936\. Father and son between them designed two of the most copied details in denim.

The 557 was also made from pre shrunk XX denim. In 1967 Levi's launched the 505 zip fly jean in the same pre shrunk cloth, and the jacket's lot number changed from 557 to 70505 so the two would read as a matching pair.

## Why Is It Called a Trucker Jacket

Here is the twist. Levi's did not call any of these jackets a Trucker, a Type I or a Type II when they were made. Those terms are modern. In the company's own words, the name Trucker was adopted in the late 1990s and was coined by Japanese vintage clothing collectors. Levi's only started using the type names itself when it launched the Levi's Vintage Clothing line.

The type system came from the same place. As Panek [explains](https://www.levistrauss.com/2020/10/23/levis-vintage-denim-jackets-detailed-in-new-book/?ref=unknowndivide.com), about twenty years after the 557 appeared, collectors in Japan began sorting the changing jackets into types as prices for vintage pieces climbed. Two of those collectors, Yutaka Fujihara and Naoki Kawamata, later edited a whole book on it, built from 34 private collections and checked against the company archive. It is a good example of something that keeps happening in denim: American workwear gets studied most closely in Japan, which is part of why the brand's best reproductions are made there. There is more on that thread in our [Japanese denim and workwear](https://www.unknowndivide.com/japanese-denim-and-workwear/) hub.

## Levi's Type 1 vs Type 2 vs Type 3

- **Type I (Lot 506, 1890s to 1953):** boxy, one riveted chest pocket, two pleats, a cinch at the back, rivets on the cuffs.
- **Type II (Lot 507, 1953 to 1961):** boxy, two flap chest pockets, two pleats, waist adjusters at the sides.
- **Type III (Lot 557, 1961 to 1967, then 70505):** tapered, no pleats, no rivets, two chest pockets with seams running in a V down to the waistband. This is the Trucker.

One more clue for vintage hunters: the Levi's FAQ says a capital E on the red Tab, the so called Big E, means the jacket was made before 1971.

## Why the Levi's Trucker Jacket Lasted

Part of the answer is timing. The 557 caught on during the 1967 Summer of Love, and it became a canvas as much as a jacket. The company archive holds a tie dyed 1960s example covered in studs, and a hand painted one by Dug Miles of Macon, Georgia, a winner of the brand's 1973 Denim Art Contest. In 1988 a communications specialist named Terry Pearce bought a stack of Truckers, added flags and a globe, and handed them out at the Moscow Summit. A bull rider named Shawn Edwards wore his sherpa lined Trucker for eight years on the circuit and donated it in 2015.

The other part is the design itself. Lucier took a work jacket and made it fit a body without making it fussy. Dropping the pleats and rivets cleaned up the front, and the V seams gave it shape. It also pairs with almost everything, the same way the [Levi's 501](https://www.unknowndivide.com/levis-501-explained/) does, which is why it works as a uniform rather than a statement.

And it ages well. A Trucker in raw denim fades at the collar, cuffs and seams the way a pair of good jeans does, which is why so many people who get into [raw denim](https://www.unknowndivide.com/raw-denim-beginners-guide/) end up owning one. Whether you buy a new one, a Type II reproduction or a beat up original from the 1970s, you are wearing a sketch that has been in continuous use for more than sixty years, and that is the whole point of a design icon.