Why do so many Americans hate European trucks?

It could be up to 30 inch shorter by my calculations, but if I had the actual length of your tractor, I could tell you for sure.

 

My w900 was 256" wheel base. That is measured from the center of the front axle to the center between the two drive tires. Yes tri drives can make you go straight, so can steerable drop axles. I have had it happen to me. Not a big deal, you just need to go slower on the corners and it will not go straight.

 

With a DAF XF it would be a 181" wheelbase. With a shorter wheelbase it takes more steering force the get the two rear axles sliding over the ground when the trucks goes around a corner. You can consider the 256"or 181" chassis length as a big lever, and the longer the lever is, the less force you need as you will know.

 

He is trying to say if we used short wheel base euro trucks and trailers here they could run that road and there would be no laws needed for length. What he fails to grasp is there is no reason to run that road for us cause a few miles away is a perfectly good route our trucks can travel. He is also not taking into consideration that road was never built to hold up to the weights of heavy trucks, regardless of how they are configured.

 

Well I got my lesson on how steering works and European math where a 256" wheel base W900 is the same as a 181" DAF. And how levers work. Maybe he will give you a class on weights.

He just cannot fathom that those trucks are flat out ugly and what we have here will not work there. Also, what they have there will not work here. Heck, even my personal vehicles are not from Europe.

 

It isn't even the ugly factor my truck is a tool that makes money, nothing more. For me its the life time cost. I can buy two brand new trucks with ari big bunks on them cheaper than i can buy and run 1 of those euro trucks.

 

You can think they're ugly, and I think a truck like that Icon 900 is plain kitsch.

 

Its all what you're accustomed to. Pretty much from the day I was born until I was 19 or 20, there was a logging truck parked in the driveway. For many of those years, I never considered a truck with a 5th wheel to be a "real truck" unless it pulled lowbeds.

 

Yes, that's why I like to talk about technical matters more then about styling. So when you wrote you would like more chrome on that cabover, that's fine with me. North Americans like more bling then Europeans, that's a well known fact.