Bullheaded

Since it's was April Fools and I know you all love Volvo, remember this large car? Volvo's attempt at a long nose owner/op machine. What an ugly bastard, LOL Only thing that was impressive was it had a 625 h.p. motor for a while until they downgraded it to a 600.

They are running these Dramis dumps near me in the mines here. But they are the Kenworth and International HX versions. There are a few companies now that do the twin steer conversions, but Simard does pretty much all the factory installs, except for Western Star. I think they are one of the only companies that builds their own twin steers in-house.

You are correct Brocky. I'm hauling for the city right now. Night and part of day shift. Our city got rid of all their old self propelled V12 Detroit blowers and now has 4 of these LaRue D60 loader mounted blowers. We load under one on the street and this is one (along with a D8 Cat) in one of the 6 snow dumps we have. So in the last two months we have made 6 piles of this size . And yes sometimes it does take until August before it is all gone.

A friend of mine brought these videos to my attention a while back as we both follow a lot of farming stuff. That is a beautiful truck. And hearing the bark out those straight pipes brought back a lot of good memories of my old 9370.

It's too bad they just didn't split it up and have Volvo trucks for the aero fuel economy highway crowd. Give them all the tech crap. And give us Mack guys are old school cabs, heavy specs and big power.

Yep, if we do truly have to have this global economy stuff, I wish Mack and Renault would have just stayed together as they were. I never used to think Volvo was bad, but now that I think about it......Mack has completely vanished from heavy haul, logging and oil field. There's definitely something wrong with that picture. I have disagreed with a lot of Kscarbel opinions in the past, but I see he likes International, so he's good in my books!! LOL.

Welcome to my world, LOL We went through a few weeks of minus 40/minus 50. Now last night it was going from rain to white out snow storm back to rain. And thunder and lightning the whole time. Very strange.

9000 KG per axle. If I had 72 inch rear inter-axle spread it would be a bit more. I don't run 72 inch spreads because they are hard on tires and I don't work ton/mile. I am usually always hourly. So this truck as with mine has an allowable gross of 36,000 KG. So that is 79366.414 pounds. And I gross 140,000 with the three axle pony.

No, they will just kill them off eventually like they did to White, Autocar, Michigan, Champion Motor Graders, etc. LOL.

Interesting to note though, when we were selling the Coronado many Freightliner/Western Star dealers weren't interested in trading it as they told me the FL's have no resale value and sit on their lots? I found that truck way better built than the Star.

I really like our Coronado (sold now). I think I like it better than my current Star 4900. It rode, steered and rode just as nice, was just as quiet and comfortable. It also was a loaded model, so it had a really nice interior. Only thing that could be improved was the doors, just as most Freightliner's, felt very thin and flexy and the door handles are weak. Other than that was a very good truck. Had a LOT better build quality than my Star. Even the paint and chrome plating held up much better.

It's a 21 foot dump box. My Star 4900 is 266 inch wheelbase. The lift has to be 100 inch ahead of the drives here. And now we have a regulation called SPIF...so they all have to be steering lift axles that self equalize and no driver control. They automatically go down with around 4500 KG of load. I install illegal lift switches because despite what the government says, they do not steer on slippery roads or off road. Just another stupid law that doesn't work, made by people that don't drive. As delivered from factory you can raise them by turning the 4-way flashers on for a 3 seconds, then off for three seconds, then back on. Try that when you are sliding out of control towards a car full of someones family.

Ya, those transfer cases in those trucks do not seem very strong if you go beyond their design limits. A friend of mine bought one of those army 6x6's to forward logs in the bush and his grenaded like that too.

That is why I was hoping for a change from Star. Even if the next one is better, one lemon leaves a real bad taste in your mouth. I've always had good luck with International's.....but they were Cat powered, LOL.

Sad part is many people will overlook their new products because of the Maxxforce debacle.

Well just tried out a new HX. I gotta admit, I was pretty sour when International replaced the Paystar with this and went to the Cat truck style interior. I am currently running a DD15 powered Western Star 4900 and an ISX powered Coronado 122SD before that. Both are fully loaded units, not plain fleet spec. And I can say this HX is the nicest truck I have ever driven. International has a winner here. Obviously I can't speak of reliability, but just driving feel. We all know it will have issues, it has an emission motor after all, LOL. I don't know if it is the truck or the new X15 Cummin's, but this truck is quieter inside than my Star. And my Star is one of the quietest trucks I have ever driven except for my old Mack CH highway tractor. All you can hear is turbo whistle. Very quiet. This truck has 52,000 pound Primaxx rear suspension and it rides smoother than my Star's 46,000 Air liner. Steering is firmer, which I like. It's more sports car feeling. But the shifter is way more rubbery feeling than my Star. And longer throws. But wasn't as hard shifting as my Paystar was until it broke in. This truck has the air assisted clutch. Very little travel and effort, but you want to hope it never fails because it is very hard to push when it had no air pressure. Visibility is excellent and I think International has the nicest looking hood/fender mirrors. Only thing I didn't like about this one was dealer failed to order the 150,000 pound center tow hook. I thought I would be thrown off by that big combined speedo/tach but I didn't even notice that while I was driving.

Yep, it's a different crappy world out here now. We don't even use CB's where I am any more. All us guys that work together use two-way radios. Better range and you don't have to listen to all the new breed of highway truckers.

They can claim 900 and 1000 ft-lbs all they want, but they sure don't feel that strong to me.

Yes and it's really too bad bbigrig, because when they ran properly they were a great engine. My 460 would pull all day long with the company 475 Cat's and Series 60 500's I ran with. Only problem is, it was like a light switch. One minute the lightning bolt light was on and it was gutless, then the next hill you hit you thought the clutch was slipping because it would light up, the revs and boost would shoot up and away you went. Then next hill it was dead again, LOL. I got really good fuel mileage from it too.

I have that brochure. That is in Quebec i'm pretty sure. That is where they run multiple trailers, the east coast. Out west used to be all fat trucks like Mack CL350ST and Hayes, Pacific and KW. But they have mostly all gone to tri-drive road legal trucks now. We have RD's and CL's like that here with planetary rear ends but they only pull single 16 foot wide trailers. Too many big hills here.

The first E7 400's when the CH first came out was a solid engine. Reliable as a stone. My 2000 was about when they started getting issues. But now all the fixes have been figured out. Too bad I still didn't have it. I don't even want to compare it to the r model I ran before it, but I will say they both made me very happy. Unlike today's trucks, LOL.

Well I'm kinda amazed now. They had to put a whole new harness in for the SCR system and I have just ran 3 twelve hour shifts in MINUS 45°F weather and it is still running!!!!! Only one parked regen in those 3 days. It's a miracle!! I still hate it though.

I loved my CH. A 2000 with E7 460, 18 speed, 16 and 46's on Mack Air. I pulled 5 and 6 walking floor and log trailer on and off road. That truck never got stuck where other trucks could not go for some reason. I had all the bottom pieces of the fairings ripped off and it still kept pulling through the mud in the bush and the mill sites. Was a very good handling truck in the winter. Never ever made you nervous. It had a lot of engine issues. Was one of the ones that came out of factory with casting sand in the block. So it cooked 5 air compressors and air dryers before they finally got it cleaned out. Then it dropped a valve and it also had the famous "lightning bolt" issue. But it still wasn't as big a lemon as this new Star/Detroit.

Awe yes, lets not forget these....when Volvo also ruined Autocar.

Well my cities airport bought a brand new million dollar airport rescue fire truck and they still have to use the old one because the new one is always down with emission system issues and codes.