What to look for when specking a truck for a general freight?

Be sure it comes with wheels.

 

Trucks are specked either by a dealership or the customer purchasing the truck. As long as you find a dealership spec that ticks all your boxes then that’s fine, I like to chose all the options from drivetrain to interior and chassis colors. And not all dealerships require a $10,000.00 deposit, I’ve never paid that much just to get the order locked down.

 

I have 2 western stars with DD15 and 18
Speeds 3.08 ratio. Both trucks pull
Light freight and are team operated. The 3.08 is ok. Trucks average 7.4 they kind of suck in mountains. They do fine in Midwest regional.
The truck I personally drive is same specs except It has 3.25 ratio it also gets
7.2 to 7.4 depending on weight of load.
It does fine out west. All 3 trucks spend 95% of time in Midwest.
If your not caught up on being king of the hill . I would say a X15 500 efficiency series and 13 with 3.08 would give good economy. But that’s a Midwest spec. If you start running a lot of west and NW in mountains loaded heavy your going to suffer in pulling power. If your going to do a mix of Midwest and west then I would go with 3.25. Just my .02

 

When I bought my International 4 years ago, default dealer spec was an auto and collision avoidance system.

 

Did you drive a new Volvo with the compounding turbo D13 and iShift combo yet? I know it's not that popular of an opinion around here but all the Volvo haters need to do some math. Fleets are buying them left and right. They are everywhere for a reason and doing a great job carrying the mail, and they are reliable and efficient.

Anyway, not trying to start crap. It's all true though.

 

Mack, and I suppose Volvo too since they're the same under the skin, will provide a performance analysis on request. Start with a basic profile, typical target speed, terrain, trailer type and weight and they offer a spec that matches up. It predicts mpg, max grade in each gear, and so on. Look that over and make some change if you want to see a what-if scenario. Mine was spot on, and the actual truck has performed 100% as expected.

I have to imagine KW offers the same thing, but are going to do as little work as possible if you don't ask for it.

 

@joe
If you get serious about it let me know and I’ll share my specs with you. I would recommend the endurant 12 speed auto over the Eaton. Far smoother and user friendly.

 

2023? When recently shopping I was told early to middle 2022 by a few dealers. My local Volvo dealer still has a couple slots for early 2022, or so he said.