SIDEBAR: One Tough Customer

Jim Hebe sat in New York’s Kennedy Airport one night and watched the trucks roam around delivering Perrier and pretzels. They were old L-model and LP-model Mercedes, but all chromed up, right to the tips of their three-pointed stars. “Everyone thinks this market is driven by utility,” says Hebe, the outspoken president and CEO of Freightliner Corp. “That’s only part of it. We do more custom options per medium-duty truck than we do with our heavy-duty business. These operators care about what their truck says about them as much as any other customer we serve. They’re tired of being spoon-fed bland, vanilla trucks with limited options. Some of these buyers don’t want to be told what they can and cannot have.”

So Freightliner subsidiary Sterling Trucks broadened the menu last month with the introduction of its Acterra line. The gutsy-looking truck family is the year-long culmination of Sterling’s efforts to combine the hallmarks of a class-8 truck cab-roominess, ergonomics, durability, and comfort-with the versatility of Freightliner’s 106-inch BBC Business Class chassis.

To be built at Sterling’s plant in St. Thomas, Ont., starting next April, the Acterra family consists of four models, covering each of the weight classes from class 5 to mid-range class 8: the 5500, with a maximum gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 19,500 pounds; the 6500, with a maximum GVWR of 26,000 pounds; the 7500, with a maximum GVWR of 33,000 pounds; and the 8500, with a maximum GVWR of 64,000 pounds.

The Acterra 5500 and 6500 are both single-axle straight trucks, and are aimed at lighter-duty work that requires a professional truck-wreckers, ambulance operators, landscapers, leasing companies, private fleets, and the like. The 7500 is available as a single-axle truck or tractor, and is designed for the jobs that require a heavier capacity than the 6500 can offer. The 8500 is available as a single- or tandem-axle straight truck, or as a single- or tandem-axle tractor. It’s being marketed chiefly to the bread-and-butter Mack Trucks vocational market: dump and mixer applications.

The Acterra cab is the same one used on all Sterling conventional trucks, and the company has tried to provide the same level of amenities as any over-the-road cab, but with touches that make it more practical for vocational use.

The cab sits lower to the ground, for instance, a nod to the driver who has to repeatedly get in and out of the truck. It also enhances Acterra’s appeal for applications where low roof height are important-vehicles with truck-mounted cranes, for example.

A standard setback front axle combined with a 50-degree wheel cut means Acterra is extremely maneuverable, another big plus for a vehicle that will spend its life in tight urban settings and cramped job sites.

The Acterra offers buyers room to tailor their spec. For instance, the Mercedes-Benz MBE900 engine is standard, with the Cummins ISB and ISC or Caterpillar 3126B optional (the Cummins ISL is also available on the 8500).

The Business Class chassis yields flexibility for installing cargo bodies, whether it means moving components such as fuel tanks, exhaust pipes or mufflers, battery boxes, or even chassis crossmembers. Acterras can be ordered with horizontal, transverse or vertical exhausts.

“If we were going to design this truck from the ground up, we’d say, OK, here’s $250 million, it’s going to take three years,” Hebe says. “Well, we took two components-a proven chassis and a big cab, both already designed and here-and spent a few million bucks to put them together. We had it: the best damn medium-duty truck in the business, in one year for no money.”

Hebe says Acterra models will also be priced lower than other trucks in the market because it cost so little to develop.

“God help Navistar,” he says, talking about the Chicago-based rival’s long-anticipated medium-duty platform, still in development. “They’re going to spend $600 million to get what we’ve got today.”