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Jim Park

Former HDT Equipment Editor

Jim Park served as Heavy Duty Trucking's equipment editor from 2006-2024. Specializing in technical and equipment content, Park is an award-winning journalist who has been covering the trucking industry since 1998.

Before joining HDT, Park was a truck driver and owner-operator for 20 years and served as an editor for HighwayStar magazine, which ceased production in 2011. He maintained his commercial driver’s license to bring a real-world perspective to Test Drives, as well as to features, videos and podcasts about equipment spec’ing and trends, emissions regulations and developments, maintenance and drivers.

He is the recipient of 16 Jesse H. Neal honors (both finalist and Neal awards), including “Best Range of Work by a Single Author” in 2020.

Articlesby Jim ParkDecember 3, 2010

Balancing Act - Why Balance Just Tires? They Are Only One Part Of A Rotating Assembly.

Try starting a discussion about balancing truck wheels. You can just watch the eyeballs rolling backward in their sockets

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Articlesby Jim ParkNovember 30, 2010

Test Drive: Peterbilt Model 587 with Paccar MX Make Dynamic Duo

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

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Articlesby Jim ParkNovember 29, 2010

Reman Today: Remanufacturing Faces New Pressures in a Changing World

Why use new parts when used parts are half the price

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Articlesby Jim ParkNovember 2, 2010

Wheel-Ends: Torque Your Nuts

Attaching wheels to a truck hub is serious business. Yet it's not uncommon to see some big bruiser of a mechanic, one foot against the bottom of the tire, whaling away with a 1-inch-drive impact gun driving the wheel nuts home. That's not the right way to do it.

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Articlesby Jim ParkNovember 2, 2010

Tire Report: Wheel-End Problems -- Beyond the Obvious

We focus on tires here, mostly, but wheels and hubs, and the other gear that attaches tires to trucks, deserve attention too. Wheel-ends function as a system:

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Articlesby Jim ParkOctober 28, 2010

Going Green: Canadian Fleet Investing in Natural Gas

What prompts a very successful and highly visible carrier to wade deeply into uncharted territory and invest millions in yet-to-be proven technology? "It's the right thing to do and the right time to do it," says Claude Robert, president of privately held Groupe Robert in Boucherville, Quebec

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Articlesby Jim ParkOctober 12, 2010

All Pressured Up: Automatic Tire Inflation Systems Offer Protection from Underinflation Woes

As I write each month on the latest advancements in tire development and improvements in technology to prolong tire life and reduce operating costs, one single theme remains front and center: the need to keep tires properly inflated

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Articlesby Jim ParkSeptember 29, 2010

Analyst: The State of the Heavy-Duty Aftermarket

We've just been through a brutal couple of years; 2008 and 2009 weren't kind to trucking or its suppliers. Trucking activity was down an estimated 15 percent during that period, and that took a lot of industry-related activity down with it. Fewer trucks ran fewer miles, so they required fewer repairs. The aging schedule of existing equipment changed too, and that will have some downstream implications. Where does that leave heavy-duty aftermarket parts and service suppliers

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Articlesby Jim ParkAugust 18, 2010

Nitrogen Tire Inflation

Nitrogen is not some magic gas with mystical properties, nor is it some philosopher's stone capable of changing the properties of tire rubber

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Articlesby Jim ParkAugust 18, 2010

Where Old Tires Go to Die

Prevailing thinking has it that trailers are a good place to squeeze the last few miles of tread life out of used steer and drive tires prior to retreading or disposing of them

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