Why do so many Americans hate European trucks?

I don't think the weight of the car made much difference but there was a lot of energy absorbed bu the crushing of it between its front and being forced under the other truck but I'm still surprised at little damage to the truck.
One small consolation is that those poor people in the car probably did not know anything , just a light going off.

 

I've been reading this thread with some amusement. I'm not a truck driver, but I have a couple of eyes, I can read, I can think, and I'm interested in trucks. So I've everything in place for a few opinions.

Do Americans really hate European trucks? I don't think so.

Let's start with vans. In NA you had vans built by Ford and GM. Rather small impractical vehicles with big gas guzzling engines. And then Mercedes had a bright idea and introduced the Sprinter in the US, first using the brand name Freightliner, but now as Mercedes. Big roomy vehicles with efficient diesel engines. Then Fiat took over Chrysler, and introduced their Fiat/Citroën/Peugeot vans in the US. Citroën and Peugeot are a different company (PSA), but they have been building vans together with Fiat for decades. And now finally Ford woke up as well, and you will get the Ford Transit series in the US. Believe it or not, but the first Ford Transit was an absolute revolution some 50 years ago, and now finally Ford is bringing this highly successful line of vehicles to the US. With US engines of course, and not with the European Duratorque diesels, so you will not have the choice between front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, or four wheel drive. GM doesn't built vans in Europe, they sell Renault vans with an Opel or Vauxhal badge. So the NA market for vans is taken over by European designs.

Then we get to the light trucks. Just look at the DAF LF, the Kenworth K270, the Kenworth K370, and the Peterbilt 210/220. Don't they look familiar? The Peterbilt still has the old Euro 5 cab, but I'm sure it will get the new cab as well. The old Euro 5 cab was made by Renault. so Renault and Volvo basically used the same cab. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing applies to the new Euro 6 cab. I've read comments by US drivers that they really like these small Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks, very manoeuvrable, and not with a big clumsy nose in front of you. They certainly like this Euro cab.

When you look at the DAF you will see a big frame under the cargo area between the front and the rear axle, you will not see that frame with the Kenworth and Peterbuilt. That frame is there to prevent pedestrians and cyclists falling under the truck and in front of the rear wheels. Absolutely necessary in the densely populated European cities with lots of pedestrians and cyclists etc. But I suppose a city like New York is no different in that respect, so let's hope that someone in the US will think of the safety that category of citizens too.

A truck with a big nose would be very dangerous in European cities. You can't see what is directly in front of you, that's why you see rows of mirrors on European trucks. The driver has to be absolutely sure that there is no one in front of his truck when he wants to pull off at the traffic lights, or next to his truck when he wants to take a bend.

If you would try to use a NA rig in Europe, you might be able to use it on the highways. Anywhere else you would get stuck, just try to negotiate all those small roundabouts you see in Europe with such a rig. But even in the US you can get stuck. I once saw a TV program on a beautiful road in the East of the US, the road was winding through forests, hills and mountains. Magnificent. And there were some pictures of US rigs that got totally stuck in the bends, very funny. A European rig with a sleeper cab and a steerable axle on the trailer would have had no problem at all on that road. Supermarkets in the Dutch inner cities are supplied by rigs, not the longest versions, but rigs anyway. It's always fun to see on of them turning up at my local supermarket. It has to reverse, and make a very narrow straight bend to get to the loading bay. The gate is hardly any wider than the truck. It can do it because of the very manoeuvrable 4x2 tractor, and a steering axle on the trailer. A NA tractor with sleeper might be able to do it too, but it would have to leave the trailer outside.

I do think that European style rigs could also be used in US cities for distribution. Perhaps Paccar should try it out with a couple of DAF rigs with European trailers. By the way, Mercedes has a "cab in front of engine" truck line, specially for distribution and other purposes where the driver needs to get in and out of his cab quickly and often. It is called the Econic, and I have seen tractor versions as well.

We do have some US trucks in Europe. When I was young (a very long time ago) there was a big building project across the street from where I lived. The company that supplied the paving bricks used big red Macks, I suppose that at the time there were no European trucks with that loading capacity.
There was a demolition company that used Mack dump trucks, I guess the owner loved US trucks. These trucks had three rear axles and one front axle with bigger wheels. They were no success, I saw them trying to negotiate a very narrow straight bend (typical in old European cities), and they had so much understeer that they almost went straight ahead instead of around the bend. That's why a very heavy Dutch 60-ton Ginaf X 5460 S (10 x 8 ) dumper truck has steering on two front axles and two rear axles. Only one of the five axles is not steerable.......

You can also find a few conventional US trucks in Europe that are used for promotions etc. A US tractor (without sleeper) with a European trailer. When you see such a US tractor next to a full size European COE tractor, it looks tiny.

I've watched many episodes of "Iceroad Truckers", and it always amazed me how small the cabs of these trucks are. The poor drivers were also struggling with the gear lever going up hill, it looked like scenes from decades ago. I wonder how these truckers would like a Scania tractor with a full or semi-automatic gearbox, a cab with a Webasto heater instead of a rumbling diesel engine the whole night etc.

How roomy is a European cab? Well have a look at the new DAF XF, if you want to you can dance between the front seats.

 

That's fighting talk.

 

Why? Just a bit of sarcasm here and there. Europeans tend to try to put more sophistication in their products. Look at the whole automotive industry (cars and trucks), how much technology is going from the US to Europe, and how much is going from Europe to the US?

 

The whole your trucks are ugly (American to European) vs your trucks are dumb and backward (European to American) has been done over and over.
Tell a guy his wife is ugly or dumb is fighting talk.
Drivers and their trucks are sometimes the same.
In my experience the best trucks to own are Japanese as they are a bit of both worlds in that they don't fall apart and are not overly sophisticated.

I suspect you are one of the European guys already on TTR that has come back incognito to have some fun poking the Americans with a stick.

 

@Caesar:

Would a driver feeling relaxed while an OptiShift-tronic does all the work, make for good TV?

 

Very well said, probably not. But it is strange that NA cars have been equipped with automatic gearboxes for decades (many drivers most likely can't even use a manual), and on their trucks they seem to mount very old-fashioned gearboxes. Europeans consider the use of semi and full-automatic gearboxes a safety issue. The truck driver should concentrate on the road, not on choosing the right gear or fighting the gearbox. And if you are using a manual, you should be able to shift it with your fingertips so to speak. My late father had a book about car technique from the time he had driving lessons (some 65 years ago). That was about the time the first synchronized gearboxes appeared in passenger cars. And according to the book, many drivers didn't like that. It wasn't 'sporty', a real driver had to double-clutch. And when the automatics came, we heard the same thing, shifting gears is 'sporty'. I've never understood what is so 'sporty' about stirring around in a box with gears with a big stick. There were Porches with a gearbox that you could use in manual or automatic mode. The car was always faster in automatic mode.

So maybe that's the answer, NA drivers like to be a kind of 21st century cowboys, taming their somewhat old-fashioned trucks, and European drivers like a modern state of the art vehicle that provides them with a comfortable and save working place.

@king Q: No, I've never posted anything here!

 

Caesar has many valid points. Essentially it is the cabover vs conventional arguement all over again. As you can see from the avatar I am one of the few individuals in NA still using a cabover.
The p roblem was that that cabovers were used improperly for years by sticking a guy over the road in a vehicle for weeks at a time, and wondering why your turnover was 125% annually. So the industry over reacted and uses conventionals with the excuse "I can't recruit drivers if I run cabovers, no one will drive them."
So we have monster 275" wheelbase tractors pulling 53' trailers in NYC. Illegal by the way. And 230" wheelbase with 53 footers everywhere, some places can handle them, some places can't.
Multistop distribution to food service, retail and other locations with runs returning to terminal every 3-5 days would be ideal for sleeper cabover, but the only manufacturer in the US, Freightliner has mishandled marketing the Argosy so badly, that is not an option. Not a day doesn't go by when someone walks up to me and says they wish they had their old cabover back so they could get into the space at a crowded truckstop, or make deliveries to customers easier.
Americans are blissfully ignorant of lots of circumstances in other countries. This is just one more example.

 

about that, swiss company friderici had or maybe still have kenworths t800 4axle tippers with 3rear axles, all on single tires , rearmost could steer, i believe that those are sisu axles , and it is very possible trucks are converted in europe but still very rare , there is one of them in bosnia

 

I found a nice picture of a European rig specially designed for city distribution traffic. It has a Mercedes 'cab in front of engine' Econic tractor.

Notice the difference between NA and Europen trailers. A NA trailer has its axles at the very end of the trailer, and that means that 50% of the weight of the trailer is carried by those axles, and 50% by the tractor.

A European trailer has its axles far more to the middle of the trailer, and that results in a weight distribution whereby appr. 70% of the weight of the trailer is carried by its own axles, and 30% by the tractor.

By the way, this trailer seems to carry Compressed Natural Gas tanks for the engine of its truck.