MID-AMERICA SHINES

April 7, 2010 Vol. 6, No. 7

Well, Louisville has come and gone for yet another year, so now I can get to work. In a way it marks the start of my year.

In one sense it’s just a spot on the map of Kentucky but it’s much more than that too. Say the city’s name to a trucking person and it means the Mid-America Trucking Show, nothing else. Which in turn means Spring to me, and usually my first longish drive of the year. A chance to blow some carbon off my own internal spark plugs. For 23 years in a row I’ve made that trek, 12 hours door to door if I just roll through, stopping briefly for a meal or two and one refuelling. I rarely do it that way, usually visiting friends or companies along the way.

Nowadays, with air travel such a gigantic, ridiculous, insufferable pain in the hind quarter, I’ve resolved to drive almost everywhere I need to go anyway. I will not fly unless there simply is no choice. I will not allow myself to be presumed guilty of something or other by airport security people, or worse, to be branded a terrorist for taking too much shampoo on board an airplane. Spare me. If I thought my safety, and even yours, was actually being improved by such shenanigans, I might put up with the extreme hassle. But my safety is not improved one iota, whatever an iota might be.

But I’d better not start a real rant here, so let’s get back to the show that’s come to mark a special moment in the year of every trucking journalist and purveyor of trucks and engines and axles and all the other bits and pieces of this industry, shiny and otherwise.

This year’s extravaganza saw almost a full slate of truck makers exhibiting their wares, Volvo being the sole exception, which sparked rumour after rumour. By and large the spirit was buoyant and lively, though I’m sure visitor attendance was way down over years past. I was able to walk the aisles altogether too easily, not that I had much chance to do so, what with the endless press conferences I felt compelled to attend.

Don’t take that implicit complaint too seriously. I thrive on those press conferences, always wanting to know who’s doing what, but this year there was a marked increase in the number of companies with not much to say. In some cases it’s good to be with those folks anyway — there doesn’t always have to be reportable news — but sometimes we see elaborate smoke and mirrors with nothing revealed after the air clears.

All that aside, there were two clear themes this year: fuel economy and fuel economy. At every press conference, at every booth I visited, there was a claim that the truck or the trailer or the little widget offered a fuel saving of X percent. And I’m sure that in some cases the claim could be backed up.

FOR ME THERE WERE SEVERAL HIGHLIGHTS, two of them coming from each of Peterbilt and Kenworth. Both of them presented new trucks — the Model 587 and the T700 respectively — which were impressive in themselves, but I was especially pleased to see both of them get serious forward lighting as standard equipment. With Xenon HID lights as options. It’s long been my contention that North American truck makers — car makers too, for that matter — go only far enough to satisfy weak government lighting regulations created years and years ago, ignoring the reality that base legal lights can be over-driven at about 80 km/h. It’s not good enough.

Both the new PACCAR trucks also feature a very cool new in-dash driver aid, called SmartNav in Pete’s case and NavPlus at Kenworth. Basically it’s a computer with a pretty big screen that manages navigation, vehicle diagnostics, communication and entertainment technologies. Operated by keyboard, touch-screen, or voice, this thing can do an awful lot.