THE VOCATIONAL WORLD’S BUZZING

March 30, 2011 Vol. 7, No. 7

Holy moly, could there be any more to write about than what I see these days? I can’t remember a time when this industry was so alive with new technologies and new approaches to the art of trucking. I think I may have written about that notion before, but it just keeps on coming. Truth is, I dare not go on long enough here to cover everything there is to cover.

We’ve got yet another opposed-cylinder engine in development to rival the OPOC that Navistar has invested in, a couple of new hybrid powertrain products, an altogether new approach to the retread market from Continental Tire, and of course the vocational world is alive like it hasn’t been in quite some time. That’s thanks, I suppose, to Caterpillar’s bold entry into the fray. Cat is obviously serious about making its first on-highway truck a success, and I wouldn’t bet a lot of money against them even if the new CT660 has a premium price attached. Frankly, I don’t know why they didn’t do this long ago.

But Freightliner is looking pretty ready for the vocational fight too with a couple of new severe-duty models, including a crane truck (pictured). Trucks built for the freight world just can’t offer anything like the same margins so this new focus makes lots of sense, it seems to me. Daimler Trucks North America has now covered off the entire Sterling vocational offering and gone some way beyond.

And Navistar remains as serious as ever about heavy-duty work trucks, of course, showing off an updated WorkStar and a new mixer model or three from its recently purchased Continental subsidiary at the recent ConExpo/ConAgg construction show in Las Vegas. At the same show the company announced that its MaxxForce 15 diesel is now in production (it actually has been since mid-January) and ready for order, with delivery likely in the summer. Cat’s version of the engine, the only differences being paint and brand identification, won’t be offered until 2012 for reasons I don’t yet understand.

I’d been planning to pursue that small matter at the Mid America Trucking Show where ‘media day’ is going on as we speak in Louisville, Kentucky. In fact I should be finishing up this edition of Product Watch in a hotel room down there, after consuming a sizeable steak at dinner with the Cummins folks, an annual pre-MATS tradition. But for the first time in recorded history I’m staying home, victimized by a screwy spine that screamed ‘no way’ to the non-stop press conferences and general frenzy of that show. You just don’t know ‘busy’ until you try to cover this thing as a journalist. In fact, getting to see the show itself is a struggle, a virtual impossibility.

So I’m going to have to ‘cover’ Mid America remotely, relying on a few colleagues and mates, the coming onslaught of e-mailed press releases, and a bunch of phone calls  to gather material for my next newsletter on April 13th.