test drives

By Tom Berg

This 10-speed brings continuous power to a crowded field of smooth self-shifters.

Tags: Allison Transmission, Test Drive, Navistar, Transmissions

By Tom Berg

Combine the frame from the vocational VHD with the comfort of the VN highway tractor and you have something strong for long hauls.

Tags: Volvo Trucks, Test Drive, Mid-America Trucking Show, Heavy Haul, Class 8

By Tom Berg

From the ground and behind the wheel, you’d think this Freightliner Columbia is brand new. This was obvious on a run out on Interstate 70 in eastern Missouri, pulling a hopper-bottom trailer with a heavy load of granulated lime destined for an animal-food plant in Montgomery City, west of St. Louis. It rode, shifted and ran like new, and was just as comfortable.

Tags: Freightliner, American Power Group, Wheels, Test Drive, Dual Fuel, Glider Kits, Clarke Power Services

By Tom Berg

Senior Editor Tom Berg takes Volvo's lightweight Optimized VNL430 for a drive near Volvo's New River Valley plant in Virginia.

Tags: Volvo, Test Drive, Lightweighting

By Tom Berg

Does a bigger cab merit a larger model number for a truck? It does with Peterbilt’s 567, the builder’s latest vocational truck, which will eventually replace the current 367.

Tags: Paccar, Peterbilt, Test Drive, Vocational Trucks

By Tom Berg

My drive of the Cummins Wesport ISX12 G was at a mid-July “natural gas summit” hosted by Kenworth at its plant in Chillicothe, Ohio. A half-dozen gas-powered KWs built for different applications were offered to dealers, customers and press reporters for inspection and evaluation. A few fellows with CDLs, like me, took them for drives, and I had – how shall I say? – a learning experience while in a T800 short-haul daycab tractor pulling a 53-foot van trailer.

Tags: Kenworth, Cummins, Natural Gas, Test Drive

By Jim Park

Freightliner’s Cascadia 113 and the ISX12 G from Cummins Westport aren’t exactly strangers. About 100 of the trucks have been in customer hands for some months now. Equipment Editor Jim Park takes one for a spin.

Tags: Cummins, Natural Gas, Freightliner, Cascadia, Natural Gas Vehicles, Test Drive

By Tom Berg

Time is money, and that’s the essence of a front-discharge mixer. It drives right up to where concrete’s needed and, after the driver adds chute extensions, starts offloading. Terex/Advance Mixer in Fort Wayne, Ind., makes rear-discharge drums for mounting on conventional truck chassis, but its heart is in the front-discharge version that it builds all-new and as glider kits.

Tags: Terex, Test Drive, Vocational, Mixer

By Tom Berg

How does 18 mpg in city driving and 25 on the highway sound for a full-size pickup? That’s what Chrysler’s Ram brand is claiming for some of its 1500 series trucks with a gutsy V-6 gasoline engine mated to an 8-speed automatic transmission.

Tags: Ram Truck, Test Drive

By Jim Park

Equipment Editor Jim Park still recalls his first meeting with a T800. It was in the fall of'86, the year the truck was introduced and a little more than a year after the T600 had made its game-changing debut.

Tags: Kenworth, Test Drive

By Tom Berg

Only a couple of days after announcing its new T880 at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky., in March, Kenworth had a couple of trucks for us press people to drive. Equipment Editor Jim Park and I were pleased to be among the scribes who got their hands on the just-minted vocational and regional-haul vehicles.

Tags: Kenworth, Test Drive

By Sven-Erik Lindstrand

The day after its introduction in Dusseldorf, in northern Germany, we reporters had a chance to drive Mercedes-Benz’s new Sprinter van for a few hours on various surfaces, from a test track to a dirt road and on a nearby Autobahn.

Tags: Cargo Vans, Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Test Drive

By Jim Park

Red engines have been fixtures under Navistar hoods since the late ‘90s. Except for the recent hiatus, you have to go back some 75 years to the days when Cummins and International trucks weren't almost synonymous in North America.

Tags: Cummins, Navistar, Test Drive

By Jim Park

The 6x2 concept isn't new, but it's not popular on our side of the Atlantic Ocean. Meritor aims to change that with its new SmarTandem single-drive-axle tandem configuration. Equipment Editor Jim Park reports on his driving impressions.

Tags: Meritor, SmarTandem, Test Drive, Winter

By Tom Berg

When reviewing a product like the Caterpillar CT-660, there is no replacement for getting the opinion of the people who have been using it day in and day out. “The drivers love it,” said John “Dick” Jones, president of Jones Fuel Co. in Columbus, Ohio, talking about the fleet’s first in-service dump truck.

Tags: Caterpillar, Test Drive, Vocational

By Tom Berg

The sloped hood on International's WorkStar 7600 was first shown off at the World of Concrete show in 2010, but with vocational-truck business seriously down during the recession, it only went into production last fall.

Tags: International, WorkStar, Test Drive, Navistar, Vocational

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

The urge to compare is great, but I will resist. Both Peterbilt's Model 579 and Kenworth's T68O were introduced with much fanfare at the Mid-America Trucking Show earlier this year

Tags: Test Drive, Peterbilt

By Tom Berg

Cruising down the Interstate, you glance at the tachometer and gasp as you see the needle hovering at under 1,200 rpm. Yet the engine isn't vibrating or straining, and the rig continues to move steadily forward

Tags: Test Drive, Mack Trucks, Diesel

By Tom Berg

If the Kenworth K270 had been introduced in time to be judged for the medium-duty Commercial Truck of the Year award, it might have given the Model 210 from KW's sister company, Peterbilt, a run for the title

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

When I first throttled up the new Cummins Westport ISX12 G, I wanted to make a comparison between this natural-gas-fueled engine and its diesel-fired counterpart. But they are different engines, with very different approaches to getting fuel into the cylinders

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

For many years, Western Star Trucks played last fiddle in truck sales symphonies, with U.S. Class 8 market share numbers of 1% and less. The company's share climbed a bit when it was bought by Freightliner in 2000

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

When I first heard that Kenworth's new T680 was unveiled at the Mid-America Trucking Show, I wondered why Kenworth was already upgrading the two-year-old T700

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

BAE Systems is a multi-national company that claims to have built HybriDrive electric powertrains for more than 3,500 transit buses in cities around the world, plus many thousands of straight diesel trucks for the U.S. Army. And it's developing hydrogen fuel cells and electric propulsion systems

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Last fall, Allison Transmission invited a few trade press reporters to Indianapolis to fill us in on a future product: the TC10, an automated mechanical transmission the company will release in late 2012.

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

When I first saw the T680 on the show floor at the Mid-America Trucking Show, I thought, that's the same as the T700. That truck is only two years old, and I was wondering why the truck maker was introducing its replacement after such a short lifespan

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Baby 8 trucks (Class 8 chassis with midrange engines) have long been useful conveyances of moderate load

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Unique to North America, this all-wheel-drive cabover is strong, maneuverable and fun to drive. Driving this Canter FG was like seeing an old friend who's aged gracefully

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

I recently sold my '87 Dodge W150 pickup, and I don't miss it at all. Oh, I liked it when I bought it a year earlier, because it was a funky Power Ram 4x4, built just a few years afte

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Nunlist, Associate Editor

After several years of absence, Isuzu's gasoline-powered, medium-duty trucks are back for the 2012 model year. I had a chance to test drive the new 2012 NPR Gas truck, as well as the comparable NPR Eco-Max diesel

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

The "viper yellow" paint on this Kenworth T800 grabs your attention, but there was much more to this dump truck I drove last summer

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

We came, we saw, we drove -- but not far. Caterpillar people are very proud of their CT660 vocational truck. They introduced it earlier this yea

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

What a difference a little extra torque makes. I recently had the privilege of being one of the first drivers outside of test fleets to put a new fuel economy and performance concept from Volvo through its paces

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

One way to cut weight and cost from a new truck is to choose a relatively small engine. This is the essence of the Mack Granite MHD, announced early this year and recently put into production

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

The dynamics of the U.S. transportation market are changing, opening the door to smaller, more efficient trucks

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

The emergence of the regional transportation market is causing many fleets to rethink their equipment demands

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

As light-duty commercial trucks go, cargo vans are a hot seller because they're so useful. In a good year, about a quarter million are built and snatched up by tradesmen, building contractors, rental fleets and many other types of users

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

When Navistar execs turned the key on one of the first MaxxForce 15 engines at the 2009 Mid-America Trucking Show, there were more than a few doubting Thomases in the audience

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Freightliner has long been a sales leader in on-highway tractors, and now it wants to dominate the vocational truck business. Its recently designed Severe Duty products are meant to do that, and a big marketing campaign will support them. Will they be up to the task

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Steep hills can be tough on trucks, even if their manual transmissions have sufficiently low gearing and drivers are adept with the clutch

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Does the world need another Class 4 and 5 vehicle in a market already crawling with trucks

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

What's this foreign truck doing in the hands of an agency of one of these United States? Helping West Virginia's Department of Highways maintain roads and bridges, and plowing snow and spreading salt in the winter.

Tags: Test Drive

By Steve Sturgess, Executive Editor

In line with an emerging trend to migrate air suspensions up to the front of the truck, Kenworth has introduced the AG130 for T660, T800 and T2000

Tags: Test Drive

By Jim Park, Equipment Editor

You can't argue with the design, engineering, and manufacturing synergies of improving on an existing product

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

Sometimes a marketing department's claim of "all-new" approaches the truth. That's the case with General Motors' Heavy Duty pickups and cab-chassis trucks, which were extensively upgraded and refined for the 2011 model year, even if GM doesn't call them all-new

Tags: Test Drive

By Tom Berg, Senior Editor

So there I was, westbound on Bow Hill Road in Skagit County, a few hours north of Seattle, wondering if I'd ever find a place to turn around

Tags: Test Drive

By Steve Sturgess, Executive Editor

The first impression on being presented with a line-up of trucks at the Paccar Tech Center is that Kenworth's new T700 - unlike its T2000 predecessor - is recognizably from the same stable as the highly popular T660

Tags: Test Drive

By Steve Sturgess, Executive Editor

Last week's ride 'n drive at the Mount Vernon, Wash., Paccar Tech Center was set up to experience over a day both the new Kenworth T700 and the Paccar MX along with other Kenworth models and optional Cummins engines

Tags: Test Drive