1/5/2012  Test Drive: Ram Tradesman is Quiet, Comfortable, Fast -- But Built for Work
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 after Chrysler dropped the Power Wagon name. According to the owner's manual, its 318 V-8 made all of 130 horsepower. Still, it was a tough old beast. I once used it to haul a ton of ¾-inch stone, and its "half-ton" leaf springs hardly sagged.

I got a kick out of driving it around our suburban lot, following the Ram's Head ornament on the nose. (Dodge had stopped using those by '87 -- something about the feds not wanting pedestrians gored -- but the previous owner had bought one and bolted it onto the hood.)....

12/14/2011  Test Drive: Kenworth T800 Dump Truck with Latest Powertrain
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.

It had Paccar's MX diesel, now in its second year on the market, bolted to an 8LL UltraShift Plus, one of Eaton's Vocational Construction Series automated mechanical transmissions that I hadn't driven before.

We were near Columbus, Miss., at Paccar's engine plant, where MXs like this one are now assembled. The plant opened early this year and is taking over North American production from a factory in The Netherlands.

The MX is quiet and pleasant to drive. Its size, at 12.8 liters, is just right for a heavy vocational truck. Like similar diesels from competitors, it can make healthy horsepower and torque.....

11/28/2011  Quickspin: Driving the new Cat Truck
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 year at the ConExpo show in Las Vegas, and in October they seemed pleased to allow members of the trade press to drive it. We were a little disappointed to be limited to a short course at Cat's demonstration center near Peoria, Ill. It was sufficient to sample the premium features in a quartet of demo trucks, but not get any feel for how the model performs at road speeds.

Premium is the word for the Cat Truck, the builder's first road-legal piece of equipment. It was evident as I climbed in and looked at the specially designed dashboard, instruments and controls. The door slammed with a solid thunk! and the power windows rolled up and down smoothly. The interior trim includes a lot of plastic, but the panels have a look of ruggedness and class. I wasn't in any seat long enough to make a comfort judgment, but I'll bet they're good ones.....

11/16/2011  Test Drive: Volvo's Torque Magic
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. It uses no add-ons, no new hardware, nothing experimental, and won't require a major additional investment.

Actually, Volvo had two new powertrain packages for us to try on our test drive out of Greensboro, N.C.: Eco-Torque, which we'll get to shortly, and the one that gets star billing, called XE13 (XE for exceptional efficiency).

Ed Saxman, Volvo Trucks' powertrain marketing manager, says the XE13 concept is something between evolutionary and revolutionary. Simply put, it's a software modification built on the gear fast, run slow principle. Volvo calls it "downspeeding," running at a lower engine rpm at a given vehicle speed.....

10/19/2011  Test Drive: Mack's Granite MHD
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.

Meant for medium- to heavy-duty work, the MHD uses an 8.9-liter Cummins ISL9, which shaves several hundred pounds and several thousand dollars off the price of a regular Granite with a large-bore Mack Power diesel. The MHD is aimed primarily at municipal fleets and private operators that don't need a full-fledged Class 8 truck but still have some heavy chores to do.

It comes as a 10-wheeler, with tandem rears but no lift axles, and only as a straight truck. A single-rear-axle version might expand its appeal to municipalities, but Mack has no plans at the moment to take it in that direction. For one thing, an otherwise premium Granite might be too pricey against medium-duty trucks that compete for such business.....