Red Horse

6.0? 6.4?

With the opening of the Work Truck Show today, Ford finally announces some good news with respect to 650/750. The 7.3 V-8 should be a big seller for class 6 and 7 operators who need the GVW and reasonable power but don't run the miles to justify the diesel premium https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2020/03/03/ford-marks-35-years-of-commercial-vehicle-leadership.html

Cabooses! I'm so old I remember early in my career dispatching and one stop was a Delaware & Hudson siding in Newburgh NY to fuel the stove in a caboose!

Gateway Terminals is a large bulk material handler in New Haven Conn. Outbound scrap steel is one material they handle. Not sure if they still use them but they had a bunch of those 8 wheeled Internationals and they would drive out onto the pier where the scrap ships we tied up. The cargo cranes had what looked like huge drag line buckets and the trucks would back into the buckets, dump the load, then the cranes would lift them up and dump into the ship. Quite an operation. How about it Blackdog-still doing it that way?

BH, Likewise. To my wife's dismay I saved most of my Mack national accounts calendars-same ones I'm sure that dealers/branches could purchase. So I asked "Siri" what years match 2020? Answer 1992. I'm now using my '92 Mack calendar again😎

But what will ultimately translate to North America? In any case they are good looking. But old school as I am, I look at all of these features as longer term maintenance nightmares. Or from another perspective, you don't "fix" anything in the future--you rip out the "bad" module and install the new one. Not a knock on Volvo-just the way of the world these days IMO.

Matt Almost 4 months to Brooklyn- any chance?

wow--well cared for! You won't see many New England trucks of that age looking like that

One thing for sure- like that separation of headlight and turn signal. should be a new federal standard to get turn signal out of same headlight bucket so you can SEE it

MD7?

good move if you can swing it. Just know for sure which 6 speed it has. The TRXL 107 has a low ratio of 14.10 and the TRXL 1071 has 23.08 ratio. I believe it was really ment for mixers so they could creep along while pouring curbs/sidewalks etc. Friend of mine has one and I quickly learned no way you could go from the hole and grab first direct-at least I couldn't.😰 But if you put the main in 2nd and the spliter in low you could take off with a load and then go to first direct with the splitter on the high side and you would maintain speed.

Nice. 6 speed low hole would be nice, then again we ran many 237/5 speeds grossing 80,000! Too bad you can't buy such a bullet proof truck today

5 speed? Started life as a tractor??

WS & G ?? Have never seen that one before!

Looking good Rich-what are those seats?

Rich-any problem hooking that 9513 up to a mid range engine? It was designed for big bores.

My guess is they load it with skid steers😄

We are getting close!

For sure-looked like a flat site to begin with. When I first saw the pictures my reaction was WTF? Is this a Ritchie Bros. Auction? Two LiuGong D10 impersonators could have leveled it. And 7 days curing time, 30 days full strength? They must have miracle concrete!

Excellent point. Plenty of gloom and doom as to WHY someone CAN'T do it, and here we have this guy building from scratch a high end class 8. Maybe that is it-high end as in high cost and therefore greater margins than say the volume builders like Freightliner, International and Volvo are doing. And as you correctly point out- more a matter of appeasing Wall St and the financial press. Ford is another example. Every time I've ever questioned why Ford did not offer a Cummins/Allison option on the BON website I get the ..."too expensive" excuse. Forget about the fact that they offered that option in the old 650/750-both the ones built at the Ford plant in Cautilan (Sp?) Mexico (2000-2003) but also the ones built in the Bluediamond JV plant at Escobedo from 2004 until the move to the Ford Avon Lake plant. Not exactly a major engineering effort to put that power train combo back in the mix. I totally get it on profitability. But today management is so focused on looking good in the short term they ignore a broader product line that at some point just might smooth out the peaks and valleys in the profitability chart.

But the truck in question is a rubber bushed 34 right?

For sure as Terry said-Not a rear end/suspension you would use in any kind of off road application. Will it work? I'm sure it would as long as you remember that you are asking it to do something it was not built to do- and load and drive accordingly when you are in the woods. Now I'm sure there are plenty of talented posters here who would have no trouble taking that truck at the right price and getting a heavy tandem cut off and converting it. Next question is, if it was built as a lighter weight tractor, will the frame hold up to the task? Today single channel frames with a deep section modulus are preferred to the double channel frames of the old days. But if its a single channel, again probably built for highway serviced.

Nice-what brand kit is that?

13 million bucks? So what can you buy today for 13 million in terms of a manufacturing facility-or should I say "assembly" facility. How about it KSC-was this a going assembly operation? Also I've been reading lately about the Democratic takeover of the state and they are in the forefront of repealing any and all "Right to Work" laws. Seems like anyone concerned about future labor costs would avoid that state like the plague. In particular with a 2.6 unemployment rate.

Kevin, Would agree. I think the only thing that killed it was the changing EPA regs and Ford did not want to spend the bucks it would have taken to bring it in compliance. One of the early test fleets was a big Maine oil jobber. Had a bunch of LN-8000 peddle trucks with the test motors. I was always of the belief that its success was partially due to the fact that as it was an ag motor, by design its block was super strong as often in ag applications the block was a structural member.