Best tractor for durabilty

I feel like 1999-2001 were the best of the best for any truck/engine

 

Pre EGR trucks are going for the price of Gold lately, or that's were their asking for absolute Beat Crap.
I could have bought a Decent pre EGR W900 a year ago for what they are asking for a Beat FrightLiner Classic these days.

I lowered my standards to a old Fld and even those they are asking dream prices.

Thinking a new glider in the spring. The offset in price when I worked the figures of buying a new glider truck verses rebuilding one top to bottom was not that far apart in the long run when you factor the labor and downtime.

Just not worth rebuilding old rusty junk

 

I'm not going to tell you the FLD is the best truck. Matter of fact it's only the 2nd class 8 truck I've even driven, & the only one I've owned. But there seems to be so many of them the used parts availability is great, & they're pretty easy to work on. I really like Paccar trucks. I like Petes, but the fit & finish on Kenworth trucks seems to be top notch. Either W900 or T600/T660 would be my choice.

If ELD's don't concern you, then I might go as new as '07. You can usually shut off the egr via computer & leave the hardware intact so it looks smog legal visually. I prefer my engine not to have any of that crap, so I think '03 ('02 my engine's) is the last pre egr years.

I'm partial to the series 60 detroit. Again the only one I have 1st hand experience with, but so far provides excellent fuel economy, & has been very reliable. I also have experience with the smaller ISB Cummins in the dodge trucks & they were both great little engine's. With that said I liked my '99 5.9l cummins 10 fold over the '12 6.7l that was choked down with smog nonsense..

 

Pete 379 and KW900 are iconic. My personal favorite is Volvo 770 with Detroit s60 or Cummins n14, I just like the comfort of a big cab

 

I hate my iPad. I just made long post that it lost. Grrrrr

 

I love the looks on the W900 but the cab is sooo small compared to 4900 Western Star I am driving for my company.

Old Classics used to be cheap last year. I can not bring myself to drive a plastic truck. Drove a old Columbia for trainng. What a POS. Felt like a 1987 Chevy Baretta.

I used to do the same thing with EGR cars back in the day. Leave all the crap on but just bypass it so the car would run decent without having to take all the crap off

 

50k would get you into a pretty nice kw or pete Longhood just saying

 

I would lean towards the old iron.

Desiel operates by compression ratio. Once you crank em enough with air pressure and they fire they are alive. Or are cold and need warming up for a few minutes prior to getting to work. The first ten miles or so it's got a form of arthritis until all the lubes reach normal temperatures. You were the computer. 60 some odd gauges or more.

You really don't need no stinking computer. To be blunt.

Ive always been partial towards the older Pete long noses, Freightliner noses and the Mack 500. Very few of the modern truck showed me quality. KW T2000 would be one. It just kept going when that line came out provided you have had sufficient torque and horses for the work.

I'll love mack to my dying day for what I have done with them in all sorts of situations that will break a road truck. Especially off road or on ice. But I would not want to take a mack cross country. Its NOT that good. Ive had a couple sleeper macks in regional and enough was enough, in those days company speed was 55 when everyone roared by 70-80+ Im in the way in the carolinas.

But to pick just one truck? I really cannot do it. All I can tell you is I need horses, torque and no computer crap. There is no point in trying to think 7.5 mpg in fuel mileage after 50 years of evoluation in several generations of heavy class 8 tractors from only 5 mpg. Essentially emissions choked it.

I dont come here to whine, rant or make noise. It's just that the older iron did it's job that I required them to in my time. The T2000 would be the last one I would call a good truck. JBH gave me like a frigging 83 eagle COE with small sleeper for OTR work in my last few weeks. It did ok, but it's not for me. I gtfo. Quit.

While a batch of 50 Centuries and other condo equipped bobtails were in a roman rectangle during storage in one corner of the North Little Rock yard just off I-40 under the billboard.

Ive watched trucks become plastic and evolve into even more plastic gaining weight as they go. There was one sitting in town the other day, a flatbed tractor set up just right to my eye. Headache rack, APU third tank storage box on opposite rail etc. Driver was asleep. I liked it. But not that much.

Volvo has a mixture of reactions from me. Ive had two or three that I would call excellent. But the rest was such cheaply spec'ed trucks for the least money possible cost that they did not have much of anything. Then beat you to death on the bridges. Ugh.

The last tractor I touched ever was a 379 long nose pete with the expanded sleeper behind the small cab. 600 horse engine and so forth. I would have bought that thing on the spot if I had that kind of bidding cash. The kind of condition it was in with hardly no computer crap and you do some thinking and it simply goes and does it without a gym workout or any of that BS.