Maxidyne

It's all in, sadly, the scale of things: Volvo builds several hundred thousands of trucks a year as well as construction machinery and other stuff. Mack branded trucks are only about a tenth of that, and Volvo management probably views Mack as the mother in law they had to take to marry Renault trucks. Volvo and the most of the world's other volume truckmakers would like to build trucks like they do F150s at 50 an hour pace double shifted. That pace would saturate most of the North American market and Volvo and Mack together have only a fifth of that. Volvo building only conventionals here and Mack almost all conventionals and the world market preferring cabovers, there's little room to grow the export market for Mack branded trucks. So Volvo's goal is probably to cut back to one plant and one cab, Volvo powertrains only, and shorten the replacement cycle by making the old trucks too expensive to fix. If that works (and it's not) Volvo gets to crank out trucks at near F150 pace and profits. So clearly Volvo, who would wet their pants if they managed to build a hundred thousand trucks a year in the U.S., is not going to be very receptive to our requests to slow down their underutilized assembly lines for even one minute to build a thousand truck a year variant, even if the customers for those thousand trucks took their business elsewhere.

Problem is that about 85% of the new trucks are bought by fleets, and they don't care about looks- They want fuel economy and that dictates an aerodynamic truck and that means a sloping hood and set back front axle. So the market for a high hood set forward axle classic conventional is maybe 20,000 units a year, and Paccar has that market pretty well sewn up.

And after a week or more of work swapping out half the drive train you can keep the engine in a 290 to 300 HP power band instead of a 270 to 300 HP power band, figure in the power interruptions from the extra gearshifts and it's probably a wash. Same with fuel consumption, might improve a bit if you use the extra gears to keep RPMs down, but the fueling gets screwed up with every gearshift and you're making more gearshifts. Waste of time and money to do that in a 20+ year old truck, would make more sense to trade for a different truck with more gears to shift if that's what you want.

Had one of the FLC112s with the Mercedes T2 cab as my assigned tractor for a year. On one hand, thanks to the 300 mm. deep frame and coil spring cab suspension, one of the best riding trucks I've ever driven, better than an FLD with the same Freightliner suspension. On the other hand, it was a pain to work on and obviously was never designed to last a million miles. Like the first generation sprinters it rusted out quickly and all the ones we had received new cabs before they were ten years old.

Heck, probably more business for Tremec now that the automakers are abandoning manuals!

Adding gears isn't going to make a Maxidyne go any faster, even with the wide ratio 7 speed it's always putting over 90% of full power out, even lugged down to the downshift point. And as Terry said, you'd have to swap the transmission AND two rear gear sets, and this is the time of year you need your truck out working instead of haunting the shop. BTW, which Maxidyne engine do you have and what year and model Mack?

IIRC the E6 was done around 1990, so you're 1993 was probably built from a glider kit. Assuming Mack built it for a mechanical E6, probably best to stick with the E6 family or a mechanical E7.

Given that Hackett wants to cut back on new vehicle development Ford has no need for more office space. Buying the remains of a massive railroad station and office building suggests that Hackett is either crazy, cray enough to go into the real estate business, or maybe he wants to play with toy trains in 1:1 scale?

Knew some folks who drag raced in the midwest back in the 60s, they'd take off after work friday, drive all night, race saturday and sunday, drive home sunday night, and be back at work monday morning. No fancy equipment, just the race car on a flatbed trailer and a pickup with a topper.

Was thinking about this, the Econic is a truck for operators who need extreme visibility and low entry height- Thus it competes with the LR rather than MR. And given that the Econic has an effective BBC as long as Daimler's own M2 conventional which is probably half the price, for many applications the Econic is a waste of money.

A lot of Ford car sales is driven by the Focus and Fusion fleet sales, and the fact that a fleet can get everything they need from a company car to heavy duty pickups from Ford. But while ford is axing those cars and showing no interest in expanding the F650/750 upward, Toyota will soon be able to supply everything from a subcompact to a baby 8, and will probably offer Cummins V8 diesels to fill that gap in the pickup range. Daimler is pricing their small SUVs competitively and can supply everything on up to a Western Star "Super 8". Usually fleet sales are around a third of Ford's sales, and with cars gone, Ford can say goodbye to a lot of those sales.

Sadly, I'm afraid we're witnessing the last days of the American auto industry- FCA is already threatening to sell off Jeep and Ram, GM has sold off their euro car biz and thus "end of lifed" most all their cars and relies on Isuzu for their compact pickup, cabovers, and V8 diesel, Nissan/Renault for a small van, and International for conventionals over 1 ton. With these retrenchments, Ford is becoming the F150 company with a bunch of SUVs, Ranger/Everest, and vestigial vans tacked on... When gas hits $4 a gallon the fickle SUV buyers will flee back to sedans and Ford will have nothing to offer them.

Ford it setting itself up for bankruptcy when customer's preferences shift back to cars.

Forgot to mention that Daimler may have left some refuse customers with a sour taste when they discontinued the Condor.

Looks kind of long in the front, I suppose to get the low floor in the cab they had to put the cab ahead of the engine, like Mack did with the LR. Could hurt maneuverability a bit, or require the use of a smaller packer to get the same overall length.

Sounds to me like they're promoting some unreachable production goals to maximize the subsidies they got from the state and local governments to move there- $645M in sales translates to ~5000 trucks a year, which would be most of the Class 8 cabover market. That's a market full of dinosaur designs, with Mack and Paccars competitors dating from the 70s too like Autocar's product based on the old White Road Expeditor 2, but having driven both the MR and RX2 I much preferred the Mack, except for it's awful ride. As for building a conventional, even if noncompetes or lack of same allow, does anybody really want the old Road Boss 2 back?

Agreed, with today's petroleum feedstocks the only way you can make affordable 95 octane is by blending in much higher than the standard 10% ethanol. Of course the automakers will use the expensive 10% or less ethanol to pass the emissions and MPG tests then stick us consumers with the choice of runnng them on $5/gallon 95 octane E10 or $3/gallon E50.

Is Big Brown trying to get around the contract, or are they that short of drivers?

Much of the rest of the worlds businesses have a longer focus too, they think out years and decades while we only think in quarters. That's why during the 80s recession when american investors were fleeing the big truck business Daimler, Renault, and Volvo took some short term losses and bought Freightliner, Mack, and White. Same thing is happening in the auto biz now- Ford's current "leadership" would sell the company's heritage for a good quarter's financials and GM is basicly a remarketer of everyone else's cars and trucks. Both are withdrawing to their home markets and maybe China. Meanwhile VW and Toyota are worldwide full line manufacturers building and selling everything from mini cars to Class 8.

Like Ford, VW Group has been sending a lot of conflicting signals lately...

Every once in awhile I'll look up a part for one of my VW Golf TDIs and out of curiosity see what other cars it's used on and find the same chassis part is used on Golfs, Jettas, Passats, and their Audi, SEAT, and Skoda equivalents. OK, that's an acceptable compromise- All those vehicles have gross weight ratings within a 20% or so range. But now VW is using Golf chassis parts on the 7 passenger Atlas SUV, and they're threatening to hack that up into a pickup truck? VW'd best not dispute any warranty claims arising from my hauling a half ton in the Golf! On the other extreme, VW is trying to use those same chassis bits in the next size down Polo et al, were the dead weight of bits designed to hold up a giant SUV or pickup is just that, dead weight. What we used to call the A series platform (Golf, Jetta, etc.) sells over a million units a year. IIRC the Focus and it's Escape/Kuga/B-Max and Transit Connect variants sell over a million units a year... If they can't get sufficient economies of scale at those numbers, compromising the Fiesta, Fusion, Edge, etc. platforms to share parts ain't gonna help much.

Could be a rail yard to rail yard "rubber tire transfer" between railroads, in which case the Teamster UPS contract does not apply.

Good points. The F650 and 750 work well enough for most users at a competitive price. But GM and Toyota are now entering the same market and offering more capability with cabovers in the case of GMC and tandems and higher GCWs from Toyota. Both GM and Toyota will soon be able to offer everything from small cars to the bottom of Class 8, and Ford will have to follow suit to remain competitive. Wouldn't be to hard too add a Cummins B series, Eaton and Allison transmissions, tandem axles, etc. to the F series- Heck, Cummins will even do the engineering for them. A little more work to adapt the Cargo to U.S. regulations and they'd have a cabover too. But with a Ford management of the month that has end of lifed the Ranger/Everest platform before it's even made it back to market in the U.S. and thinks they can replace the Fiesta, Focus, Fusion/Mondeo, Taurus, and their SUV variants with one platform, I don't expect much.

IIRC 3.90 final drive with direct drive top gear and 11-22.5 tires, gave 1800 RPM at 55.

The Postal Service ran Mack tractors with the Maxidyne engines and 5 speed Maxitorques for years in urban applications, with an average load of around 20,000 pounds but sometimes loaded to the legal limit. Starting in 2nd gear was SOP for the drivers unless they were starting on a hill or with full loads, and after a decade's use many of these trucks still had their original clutches. The Maxidyne engine has so much torque that 2nd gear starting under moderate loads is no problem.