Why do so many Americans hate European trucks?

You should put me into a small car and play avoid me. We will get that Computer working well enough to avoid the car. God knows Ive worked around quite a few who were trying to deliberately set up for insurance pay outs. The first clue you get is 6 people who are not very clean inside a newer car made for 4 that bounced into your lane trying to get set up...

 

Thank you. About what I have stated about five times in this thread so far. Both evolved to fit their needs.

 

But still, the Freightliner looks better than the new owner's truck!

 

That's a matter of personal taste, so i try to avoid letting personal opinion bias my opinion of a truck based on looks.

 

Do you mean the "new generation" mercedes?

 

I see, but even those do not have the big sleepers that I mean.

Thank you very much, that is great information.

The weight limits are very low, and why a special limit for a steering axle? Like I wrote before, over here an axle is an axle, steering or not. There's only a difference between a driving and a non-driving axle.

 

Logicly a steeraxle (whether it is on a trailer or truck )should be given more weight as it will do less damage to the roadsurface.

Australia NZ and Japan are the worst for axleweight.
I think it comes from a shared historical heritage.
All those adopted English trafficrules in the early days off cars and trucks.
The UK was also like that but changed under pressure from their neighbours.

 

Very true. And of course much less wear for the tyres. I suppose that is one of the reasons why so may trailers have steering axles over here, plus better manoeuvrability of course,

Just the other night I saw a nice videoclip of a typical NA semi with a flatbed trailer. It was a on a winding mountain road, and went around a rather tight bend. The trailer, with the axles at the very end, came all the way on the wrong side of the road, and a car drove under it right against the wheels of the trailer. It does proof that there are no conditions in NA where a European style semi would do better.

I suppose it's time then that they change their laws too. Trucks are designed for world wide markets these days, and if your national regulations are so different from what other markets have, then your trucks will need to be specially build and thus very expensive.

 

Steer axles, especially on the front of a tractor, are single tires where the other axles are duals. Carrying capacity of the standard tires used over here are usually just over 6000 lbs/tire unless the next higher capacity tire is used. Either way, I can't say that I have seen duals on a steerable tag axle, the only extra axles I've seen with duals are non steerable. And I have only seen steerable trailer axles on those extra long oversize loads like wind generator blades.

 

Living quarters for workers / scientists in extreme locations....