Cabover More Dangerous??

Give me a hood ... I ain't no woman hater ... and a COE on a rough road will give you the "blue balls" quicker than you can put on a speedo

 

Cabovers suck!

Out of curiousity, I climbed inside a cabover a few weeks ago. There's no room in them!

And then I fell on my butt climbing out of it! My own fault really; I just tried to find a step that wasn't there.

 

Room for what?
That's a relative term actually. At one time we didn't stow all the toys, big electric coolers, televisions.
All one needed was somewhere to put his clothes and maybe an ice chest.
My first TV was a 5" B&W which didn't take up much room obviously.
And we didn't have all the big mega carriers that kept drivers out weeks at a time.

 

All I drove for 5 years was a pete cabover ..loved it. good looking truck..easy to handle.. put your left leg on the line an go..lol

 

On of my early jobs was with a big company(at the time anyway) that had maybe over a hundred trucks, all COE.
All Kenworths except for ten Petes. It was considered a promotion if you got assigned one of the Petes.
Not just for the cab, but for the suspension. The Petes had leaf springs, which rode like a dream compared to the torsion bars on the K100s.

 

I was looking to buy one(freightliner argosy COE) back in 03. The truck was roomy as it was a mid roof and with the swing out steps,it was easy to get in and out of. I liked how the shifter came out of the dash,with real short throws for each gear. The visibility was good compared to a conventional,and the ride wasn't all that bad,,,,,but getting back to that accident thing,,it did give me the heebie-jeebies about losing my feet if i struck anything

 

My first eight years were done in a Cab Over. Space was defiantly an issue because we took our cooking stuff with us. Backing was eaiser than with a hood because some had set back axle's. Being "the first one" to an accident was never much if an issue.

 

When I first started driving, Cabovers had more room than hoods!
Try putting on your clothes in a 36" coffin box sleeper!
No closet space, No place to sit up except the seats in the cab.
When Kenworth introduced the first flat top 60" walk in sleeper on a conventional in late 1974 for the 1975 model year I ordered one. By todays standards the 60" flat top was pretty small but at the time I used to have guys come over and ask if they could see it because they had never seen a truck with that much room in it!
In 1976 Kenworth introduced the first 60" standup walk in sleeper on the limited edition bicentennial conventional and I thought we had died and gone to heaven.
Until those first walk in sleepers were introduced by Kenworth...Cabovers were a little roomier than conventionals.

 

The last COE I drove was a '87 KW and it had the biggest mattress of any truck I have been in before or since it was queen size,but it was no walk in nor could I stand up in it.

 

How many front-end crashes were they involved in?

Back when I was a driver trainer and drove International 9700's, my trainees had to lay on their backs to pull their pants on which contributed to my bonus. When I cleaned the interior and bunk area every two weeks, I'd find several dollars in loose change back there. It added up to a tidy sum every year.
It's twue!
It's twue!