GearheadGrrrl

Go with Mack components, especially if your job calls for anything tougher than cruising the interstates at 80,000 pounds GCW. Eaton, Meritor, etc. stuff is OK for that kind of light duty, but won't last as long as Mack components in tougher applications. For example, the Postal Service bought Macks with Eaton tandemns for tough inner city service- the Eaton power dividers failed like clockwork at around 350,000 to 400,000 miles. Even if your truck is going to live an easy life on the Interstates, Mack's overbuilt components will last longer... Note that Eaton will only sell you an extended warranty to 750,000 miles. That means you can expect an expensive rebuild not much after that, while Mack drivelines routinely last past a million miles.

http://www.farmriteequip.com/pre_owned_detail.asp?sid=07241785X11K28K2010J3I13I12JPMQ4521R0&veh=1012745 This ex UPS truck has been sitting there for a couple years, the 5th wheel is still there under the homemade flatbed. No idea what $$$ they want for it. IMHO MH's are the sleepers of the used Mack market- rustproof cab, very comfy, good ride (especially for a cabover). But being a cabover, they "get no respect". Also still for sale in central MN is a Cruiseliner sleeper with 285 horse Maxidyne, 5 speed Maxitorque, and Mack rears under a Mack bogie, asking price a whopping $2500!

Does it look like a very busy peak season? When I heard the news of the big UPS order I thought that business might be picking up, but maybe they're just replacing the old baby binders, etc.?

Nice looking truck, and my complements on your clever speccing. But Mack should have been able to supply the truck with the proper tanks, etc. placed where you needed them.

Any updates on a sleepers or a steel nose for the Titan yet? Terry E Davis of Johnson City NY They needed the sleeper yesterday... I live 20 miles from South Dakota, home of 150,000 pound+ GCW 13+ axle "road trains". The biggest power Mack offers with a sleeper is the 13 litre MP8 with a bit over 500 horses. At 150,000+ GCWs only 500 horses and 13 liters doesn't cut it- they need 600+ horses and at least 15 liters. Sure, the Titan offers 600 horses and 16 liters of torque. But South Dakota is 400 miles across and has some nasty winter storms, so truckers here demand a sleeper cab on just about any truck that goes beyond sight of home base. Mack won't be competitive in the boom market that is South Dakota 'til someone at HQ designs some extended rear sleeper cab mounts to mate a sleeper to the high mount Titan's cab. That'd take an afternoon at Paccar, but apparently takes years at Volvo.

Somebody planning on going racing... Dakar, perhaps?

Mack should offer Cummins and other vendor components across the model range- the European "we'll make them buy our proprietary engine to get our truck" model doesn't work!

And what is a "full load"? A 12 litre engine like the 460 is going to need some deep deep low gears to start 60+ metric tons on a 5% grade! Suffice to say, a highway spec 9,10,13, or even 18 speed would be marginal in a 60 ton+ construction application.

BTW, I saw a '75 Brockway tandem tractor with the Brockway cab working the harvest near Pipestone, Minnesota yesterday. I'll see if I can post some pix after I get them downloaded from the camera.

Capital gains tax has always been there, but the tax is payable only on appreciation in an asset that isn't reinvested. Thus if you sell your house and buy another one of equal value or otherwise reinvest the money, there's no capital gains tax.

First off, the above is BS... Ain't no home sales tax increase! There isn't even a federal tax on home sales to increase! Back to parts, had a pleasant experince today at Studevant Parts in Tyler, MN. Needed a low beam bulb for the "new"(2007) BMW motorcycle. 1st person in line was a tech for a company that services diesel gensets, he needed a radiator cap that he didn't have in stock on his big service truck. No problem, the parts lady just takes it, compares to the rest of the radiator caps, and matches it up. Next customer needed a choke cable. Again, she didn't even need to know what it was for, just pulled out a couple and laid them on the counter for the customer to pick out what was needed. After that, my H7 headlight buld wasn't even a challenge! A good parts man, or in this case, woman, is worth their weight in gold. Studevant Parts in Tyler will now be my 1st stop for parts!

As I commented over on the ATHS forum (and got in a few digs at the KW/Pete cultists as well), I see two decade and more old Macks still working around here every day... Nothing unusual at all!

The last USPS purchase in 2006 was about 90% Vision conventionals. But there were a few MR tractors in the order. AFAIK, all the tandem tractors in the current USPS fleet are Eaton twin screws. The Eaton power dividers reliably fail at around 350,000 to 400,000 miles.

I just moved from Minneapolis to tiny Florence, Minnesota. That's a town of 61 souls at the intersection of US14 and MN23 in southwest Minnesota. The view out my living room window has considerably improved- I've got the always busy BNSF railroad's Marshall Subdivision 200 yards away, with even busier truck route MN23 running right alongside the rails. So I'm getting a front row seat on what truckers out in the prairie states are buying and running. First off, I was startled by all the new trucks I'm seeing. This is supposed to be farm country, the last refuge of the R models, Transtars, Freightshaker cabovers, etc.. Well, new trucks are selling like hotcakes out here. Why? Most trucking here is tied to farming and the food industry, and even in a recession, people still got to eat so they still buy food. How big is the market? I've been noticing a regional carrier that's got a fleet of mostly near new Cascadias and Prostars pulling food grade tankers, feed trailers, and reefers. It seems like I see one go buy every 15 minutes on highway 23. Turns out my neighbor is the recently retired shop foreman for the company. He informs me that the company has grown to over 500 trucks and they're trading in 2006 models. Yup, just this one carrier out here in Podunk on the Prairie is buying over a hundred new trucks a year. One of their major customers, Schwan Foods, has their own private fleet as well and uses several other carriers as well. Then there's the hundreds of small fleets, owner operators, and farmers whose trucks pass my front window every couple minutes. This looks to be a bumper harvest, commodity prices are going up, and it's going to be a profitable year for the farmers and everyone connected with farming. That means the farmers and everyone else trucking farm products will be looking for tax writeoffs, which means even more new trucks are about to get sold. Throw in the new weight increases in Minnesota which are finally settling out and this could be a very profitable market for Mack! So why are new Macks such a rare sight out my front window? Because the nearest Mack dealer is 74 miles away for a start, while International and Freightliner are right there in Marshall and doing a land office business. In fact, International has eight dealers closer than the nearest Mack dealer. Kenworth is just as far away as Mack, but they seem to be making most of the sales to the owner operators, small fleets, and even farmers. Why- because they'll custom build! Remember those new increases in the weight limits? The preferred configuration seems to be a tandem drive tractor with a steerable pusher axle and a three axle trailer. And Minnesota is requiring that the tractor's GVW exceed the load carried, which means you need a GVW of at least 54,000 pounds. A generic new tractor off the dealer's lot won't fill that bill- you need 14k and 44k axles at minimum and if the factory won't fit the pusher axle, they at least shouldn't put anything in the way. KW and Pete can custom build to those specs, why can't Mack? Suffice to say, there's a robust market for new trucks out here and Mack and their Volvo masters are ignoring it.

Back in the 80s United Van Bus, a carrier for Sears, had a whole fleet of single axle Superliners with sleepers. They pulled 28 foot doubles and made deliveries from the Sears warehouse in Minneapolis to retail stores in the region.

Well, it depends... With a day cab, even a conventional can be pretty manueverable, so the cabover doesn't have much advantage there. But for inner city driving where manueverability and visibility are everything, you can't beat a Mack MR... I still miss the ones I drove at the Postal Service. With a sleeper though, and especially a long one, manueverability really suffers. Here a cabover shines- even with a long sleeper a cabover can be very manueverable. As for "unofficial" overnight accomodations, the cabover wins hands down- I still haven't found a conventional I can comfortably sleep across the cab of. The old pre-Mercedes Freightliners seemed to be designed to be slept in, with a couple inch thick upholstery cushion on the doghouse. I'm amazed that none of the manufacturers have had the wisdom to provide something similar, with a cushion between the seats and a good wide cab to stretch out across.

Well, can Volvo show us one that's done a million kilometers (never mind miles) without a rebuild?

I'm sure the M-Drive will be a joy to drive- I've previously driven Postal Service Macks with Allison automatics and was quite impressed. But we have to remember that beneath the snazzy electronics this is a single countershaft synchronized transmission. The american trucking industry evolved away from that type of transmission in the 1960s for good reason- the twin and triple countershaft transmissions lasted twice as long. Synchromesh never really made it into class 8 trucks- the synchros wear out prematurely and it becomes a crash box anyhow. So while UPS and other customers will probably be happy with their M-Drives for the first couple hundred thousand miles, after a few rebuilds at half the mileage they'd expect from a Roadranger or Maxitorque they're not going to be happy campers, and they're going to blame Mack even though it's a Volvo transmission. In the long run, that's not good news for Mack...

Doesn't sound like a bad deal, but of course you'll want to inspect it in person before bidding. Cabovers in general seem to be underpriced- near me in Redwood Falls, MN a Cruiseliner has sat with a "for sale" sign along the road for over a year now. The price has dropped significantly to $2500 and its a tandem sleeper with a 285 or 300 horse Maxidyne, 5 speed Maxitorque, and Mack rear ends and suspension. In Dassel, MN there's an ex-UPS Mack MH that's been languishing on the Bobcat dealer's lot for a couple years now. It's repainted white and has the usual UPS specs- single rear axle day cab with 300 Maxidyne and 5 speed Maxitorque.

Good to see UPS back as a Mack customer! Back when I last temped at UPS during 2007 peak season in feeders the mechanics were saying that the next UPS tractor purchases would be automatics. I'd be more than happy with something reliable like an Allison, but I fear the single countershaft M-Drive isn't going to last a million plus miles. The UPS center I've temped at has plenty of Macks with over a million miles on their Maxitorques with no major repairs. I hope the M-Drive doesn't sour UPS on Mack; Hopefully the Eaton automatics they're speccing on their non Mack tractors will be even less reliable than the M-Drive.

Those are called "turnpike doubles", legal on Indiana, Ohio, New York, Massechuets, Oklahoma, and Florida turnpikes. Also allowed in some western states- for example, North and South Dakota allow 110 foot overall length doubles on all 4 lane highways.

Not quite... in most cases we Yanks are limited to two trailers not longer than 28 and 1/2 feet long (about 8 and 1/2 meters). They don't include the extension of the first trailer to carry the 5th wheel in the measurement.

B doubles have been legal most everywhere in the US for a couple decades now. However, unlike Canada and Australia, there's no incentive in the former of heavier weight or longer length limits for using them. Thusly most US operators that run doubles use the "quick 'n dirty" A doubles setup. None the less, I've seen a few B doubles here in Minnesota, but usually these rigs are visitors from Canada.

I haven't changed a truck tire since 1977. And for $18 a tire, there's no point in doing them yourself.