December 21, 2005 Vol. 1, No. 8

Well, we’re getting a little closer to the actual introduction of DaimlerChrysler’s gift to its Sterling dealers – a little class 3 to 5 cabover to fill out the product line nicely
and to compete in a part of the market that’s hotly contested in some cities and
regions.

We don’t know a lot about this truck yet, except that it’s based on an existing
Mitsubishi-Fuso foundation and will sport a 4.9-liter engine. That’s got to be the
Mitsubishi 4M50, a turbocharged inline four that pumps out 147 hp and 347 lb ft of torque at a usefully low 1600 rpm. That’s its rating in a Mitsu FG140 anyway, one other version being 175 horses and 391 lb ft.

One thing I’ve noticed about Mitsubishi four-banger engines is an extremely flat
torque curve. In every case, as far as I can tell, it’s flat as a pancake from the peak at 1400 or 1600 rpm all the way up to 2800 or so when it starts to poop out. Great
for driveability.

Speaking of Japanese engines – and forgive me here for going way off-topic – I came across the mother of all diesels the other day. A friend sent me some
fascinating information about this 14-cylinder inline motor that pumps out – wait for it — 108,920 hp at 102 rpm. Not a misprint.

And get this… it churns out 5,608,312 lb ft of torque at that same 102 rpm!

The displacement of each cylinder is 111,143 cu in. or 1820 liters, and out of that
you get 7780 hp. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cu in. (25,480 liters). The massive crankshaft alone weighs 300 tons and the whole engine is 89 ft long, 44 ft high.

Billed as the world’s largest diesel engine, it’s made by Diesel United Ltd. in Japan and it’s intended to power large container ships. And if your ship isn’t quite
so big, you can get a six-cylinder version of this wild engine. Only 46,680 horses
in that one.

Getting back to our world of diminutive diesels in tiny trucks, the new
Sterling/Mitsubishi is an example of what a huge outfit like DaimlerChrysler can do – leverage its worldwide design capabilities to create new trucks with minimized development costs. Sterling, of course, could not afford to create this new machine on its own.

Andreas Renschler, the affable DaimlerChrysler Board of Management member who heads the Commercial Vehicles Division, says we’ll see progressively more of this. That does not mean we’ll ever see a true world truck, he told me recently, rather that Mercedes axles will find their way into Freightliner trucks, for example. And why not?

Elsewhere on the new product scene we’ve got a variation on the Air-Weigh onboard scale. The company’s 5800 Series has been expanded to include a new model designed specifically for small fleets and owner-operators. The ‘Dedicated Tractor-Trailer Scale’, was designed to help operators with dedicated rigs save money on their purchase, while still capitalizing on the benefits of weighing on-board.

This Air-Weigh scale is permanently installed in the dash and calibrated to each
suspension on the vehicle. By running the trailer suspension air line to the dash, there’s no need for a separate trailer scale. With no operator interaction required, the two-inch gauge shows the steer, drive, and trailer weights on one screen. A single button press displays GVW and net payload weights.

It lets you weigh while loading, with obvious financial and productivity benefits.

There’s another important advantage to an onboard scale, and this comes from
Peter Panagapko, president of TruckWeight in Halifax. He makes the SmartScale which I profiled here on October 12th. It’s a wireless onboard. Sensors measure
temperature and pressure changes in the air suspension and once a minute they relay the data to a handheld receiver using a low-powered radio transmitter. A small computer in the receiver interprets the information and provides an axle weight and GVW measurement that’s accurate to within 150 lb, he says.

In any event, he makes the point that an accumulation of snow and ice on the undercarriage or on top of a truck or trailer can add several thousand pounds of
unwanted weight, reducing your legal payload, stressing your equipment, and increasing the risk of overweight violations and fines. Not a small deal.

“A one-inch layer of ice or wet snow weighs as much as five pounds per square
foot,” says Panagapko. “Accumulated on the underside of a 53-foot trailer, that inch-thick sheet of ice or wet snow would amount to more than 2000 lb you didn’t know you were hauling.”

With that very useful information I’ll leave you until next time. For now, let me wish you all a great Christmas – or whatever else you might celebrate at this time of year – and much prosperity in 2006.

This newsletter is published every two weeks. It’s a heads-up notice about
what you can see at www.TodaysTrucking.com where you’ll find in-detail coverage of nearly everything that’s new. Plus interesting products that may not have had the ‘air play’ they deserved within the last few months. There’s more here than we could possibly fit into the magazine. Subscribe today!

If you have comments of whatever sort, please contact me at
rlockwood@newcom.ca.

Rolf Lockwood, Editorial Director