Curiosity question......

I work for a major worldwide company. I was in a '97 the other day. Steering wheel was actually bigger than the actual wheel on the truck. Every time you turn left you bang your knuckles on the door. It's loud, has no power steering (so backing it up is really a struggle, and is generally a hoopty. But it runs. There's really no reason to get rid of it.

Everyone is trying to do everything on a shoestring budget, with Skeleton crews. Profits just aren't what they used to be. Gotta keep the trucks in the rotation a few years longer than the good old days

 

I drive for a small fleet. On road fleet is all 2011 and up Volvo 780s, Freightliner Cascadias and Kenworth T680's. Most of our local trucks are older than 2010, 2008 Volvos, one 2009 Kenworth t660, with four oddball trucks, two early 90's Pete 379's, an early 80's Pete 359 and a 1979 International Transtar.

 

I don't think there is a "set" timelime. It's all about whether the truck is worth keeping running or not. i.e. does what it make in profits outweigh what it costs to maintain?

This truck you are in sounds like it's about time to retire though.

 

The boss here likes to retire trucks to the local/regional fleet once the warranty is up.

 

Might be a fan clutch problem. Turn a/c on fan should kick on. Or a bad temp senior for fan.

 

Most of the Mega's rotate their fleet out on a 3-4 year basis and restrict O/O and Fleecers to a 5-6 year old truck. The reason for this is twofold. First they don't have any mechanics that can fix anything. And because they don't have any mechanics worth a ####, they have have to rely on manufactures warranty to keep trucks on the road.

Secondly, they lease most of their trucks, including fleecers. The lease gives them a limited turm in order to run up the milage on the trucks up to the limit of the manufacture. When freight drops off during the slow season, they trade in the trucks near the mileage limit of the warrenty to save money and reduce fleet size.

Truckload companies other then the mega's have no set concerns over truck age.

 

I drive a 2010 freight liner that just hit 900,000 miles. Until the first of this year our company had a lot of 05/06 Kenworths, they just sold them all though. They hang on to stuff for quite a while, I would guess some of our day cab local trucks are probably 199x something models.