Why do so many Americans hate European trucks?

Pablo,

Is this YOU driving the 99 Century you purchased recently?

The scenery could be many landscapes in the American Heartland...

Are you now out on the road driving or still fixing trucks... or both?

BTW.. You're singing isn't bad at all..., and hardly any "foreign" accent comes through.

 

height from ground to cab floor is 4ft and 4.5inchs

top bunk is almost 5 ft high from engine tunnel and it have ladders if you ask this

from which model

all my family drive only cars from vag group but i cant recognize any model

 

I collect money for trailer now , I fixed all, installed ECAS and put european 24V TEBS power supply

 

sure hope you are only talking about yourself in that post--maybe next time take out the "we" and add in "i am a"

 

You have Scania's too
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEL1tCfLTQw&feature=related[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GuJXOjLSYs[/ame]
this one is from Newark, NJ and still working

 

Like I said, due to the bridging laws in the US, these short wheel base trucks would never work unless there was a complete equipment change across the country to use different trailers etc.

You have different laws pertaining to length and gross weight then we do here. With your trucks, we could not exceed much more then 70,000 lbs gross and that would be pushing it.

The sleepers in them trucks are nothign more then just a bunk from the looks of it. Our sleepers are big. They are like a small bedroom with closets to hang cloths, Refrigerators to keep food cold, Over head storage in in the sleeper for all of our items. They are designed to be lived in for long periods of time.

The driver areas in our trucks are not ment to be lived in. It is mostly for driving. I don't care for the huge driving areas myself. I drove a Volvo VNL670 and did not care for it. I like to keep some items on the passenger seat in easy reach. This is why I like my 379 Pete or the w900 Kenworths. Everything is within easy reach from the drivers seat.

Another thing about wheelbase is that if you take two trucks with the same suspension systems but one is longer then the other. The longer one rides better then the shorter one. You get far less bucking on rough roads with a longer truck then you do a shorter truck.

The truck that I am currently driver has over 700 thousand miles on it. It just had the original clutch replaced in it last year. It is still on the same transmission and drivetrain. I have had 1 total brake job done since I got in it about 5 years ago. I had to get a cylinder head replaced on the Caterpiler motor last year other then that it has only had a couple valve adjustments and some minor sensor replacments mainly the boost sensor.

Suprisingly, my truck has hardly any rattles to it even though it spends ALOT of time running down rough gravel roads to get to farm yards etc to were we load our trucks. Not to mention that in the summer I do some belly dump work which means I run out onto alot of gravel roads to gravel pits etc to get loaded.

 

Rat! I agree!

I used to drive really many European trucks and they have different cabines from small Atego to Mercedes Actros Megaspace and Europeans limited with lenth combine driving area and rest area in cabine, so they love seats you can move, turn, fold up, and that's why front end of cabine is wide like sleeper, but there is no any advantage till you drive. Yeah, I understand that Columbia daycab is much smaller and narrower Mercedes Atego day cab (as smallest Mercedes truck), and cant be compared with European class 8 truck day cabs, but I'm sure I do not need more driving area I have in my Freightliner!

So wide Europeans cabines are only for combining sleeper and driver area.

Well, gentelmen, you drove old COE trucks with the same cabine size, like Freightliner FLA, ore International 9600... I loved 9800 for flat floor like in Volvo FH globetrotter ore Actros Megaspace. But European COE cabins are much better!

About Volvo VN.... Yeah, it is truck for the USA, but belive me - they use small European FM cabine as base of US cabin. Too many parts VN shares with FH/FM cabines. Yeah volvo can use FH cabine for US (wide - 2.5m) but if you have really full size sleeper, you do not need it.

 

i just try to use bridge formula to calculate average european tractor+semitrailer combination and

i get 72500lbs , but in this case front axle would be overloaded here we can have much more load on front axle than you can ( our trucks empty are more than 12000lbs sometimes)

in this case you would need to move your 5th wheel back
in this case it could have 73500

but in some other combination( not tractor+semitrailer)

truck could load more than 80k but i dont know is it legal in interstate

anyway i also think as you for anything above but if i live in US and i need truck for local use and shorter routes especially in narrow places or for construction and if i can find proper service and dealer(where i also can exchange old truck for new later) i would chose EU truck

related to this

this is true also but our manufactures know how better how to use space

so there is not wasted space average truck have about 30 cubic feet of space for luggage , also they have refrigerator(not as big as your have but enough) if you want can have microwave cafe machine and tv.....

but there is one interesting thing to me , here in past and currently there was lot of different concepts for cab interior but all their are not so successful, for example volvo have sam thing as US models have (like 780...) but no longer offer this , now they have turnable seat and part of bunk can be elevate to create better position for read and watching tv

renault magnum have interesting concept with turnable seat and somethig like volvo and also same as US volvo, before renault premium( smaller cab) has cab without passenger seat but bunk was used as sofa/seat/bunk

also scania had option that lower bunk can be raised and you could move seat up to rear wall top bunk was above windshield also could be fold so with much space inside

also if you dont want seat you could store it under bunk ....

iveco still have option for cab without seat and lot of truck is like this
i think they have 3 versions of cab also lower bunk can be converted in to two seats and table ....

but always classic cab version with 2bunks one above other wins

also no one in this thread did not mention this maybe our trucks would be too heavy for your market

i take some calculation scania

with v8 engine as convetional truck( they stoped production of them but i take it for more realistic result) with extended cab ( like longline) 500-730hp engine with scr retarder( i know this is not standard in us but i still take it) high cab side skirts aluminum rims 22.5inch full air suspesnion .... but all on current scania product platftorm with 300 gallons of fuel would be 22000-23 150lbs heavy

 

I run, on average, 96,000 lbs to 106,000 lbs. This would not be legal with the euro trucks and their shorter wheel bases here in the US. Especially with them single axle tractors that the pics show. If memory servs me correctly, you would only beable to carry 33,000 lbs total on that tractor depending on tire width etc.

Without my 10% permit and with my pusher axle, I can be between 53,000 and 54,000 on the tractor. With the spread on my trailer, I can carry between 43,500 to 48,000 on the trailers tridems, depending on if I am running on the interstate or state roads. My inner bridge length puts me around 100,000 lbs on our state roads while I am still limited to 96,000 on the interstate highways. I would need another axle on the trailer to push me up to 105,500 ont he interstate highways here in North Dakota.

This is all acording to the North Dakota Department of Transportation aka DOT. If my tractor was shorter then I would loose some in how much I can actually carry.

Another thing is log book logging, When logged into the sleeper birth, you can not be sitting anywere in or close to the controls of the truck. Meaning, legally, you are supposed to be in the sleeper area and not in the front of the cab. Not too many fallow this actual law though.

I know that in my bunk area, I can close the curtain and actually have a mini apartment, completely seperate from the driving area.

Another thing is teams. Teams are when you have two drivers running the truck. I would hate to team in one of your trucks and for the most part it would almost be impossible. While one driver is driving, the other has to be logged into the bunk and away from the driver. This is another reason for the large sleepers completely seperate from the driving area.

But then, some drivers spend months out on the road away from home and some don't even have a real home other then the truck they drive.

As far as the hood thing. the longer noses on our trucks make it ten times easier for maintenance on the truck and ten times easier for doing pretrip inspections which include checking stuff under the hood. I would hate to have to tip my cab forward every morning to do a pretrip on my truck and every evening to do a post trip. Ot to have to open a Dog house inside the truck to check things out. It is so much easier to just open a hood and go about your business.

 

This is the thing i love in conv. trucks. but... sometimes conventional design is with hidden traps... on all new trucks engine is moved back under cabine and to remove cyl. head is a problem. to drop a tranny is the problem too. If you have coe just tilt a cabine and use crane to remove transmission, with conv. truck we need twice longer labor time to drop a tranny.

So not all things are better in conv. design.

one more thing about conv. design... yep, truck is longer, but I can see hood edges in shark turns, especially backing a trailer and I feel edges of truck better, but, seems to me it is habit and experience issue....