May 9, 2007 Vol. 3, No. 9

For a hardware junkie like yours truly, a new truck – and I mean a really new truck – is a bit like a present under
the Christmas tree. It’s just plain exciting. And for the people who design them and build them and ultimately sell them, I guess it’s like giving birth. So at the launch of the new Freightliner Cascadia in Charlotte, NC last week, we did the proper thing and drank champagne after the smoke from the fireworks had cleared. Literally.

There were actually some 640 Freightliner people involved in the creation of the new machine, which will replace the Century Class and Columbia. They weren’t all at the Launch, but by all accounts they worked harder on this one than anyone has ever worked in hatching a new Freightliner. And it shows.

A million-plus hours of design work, 150,000 hours of test engineering time, 2500 hours in the full-scale wind
tunnel… you see the point. As well, doors were slammed 220,000 times, wipers were sent through 10 million cycles, and the truck was subjected to 25,000 miles on the ‘shaker’. That’s a frame that shakes the living
you-know-what out of the poor test subject attached to it. And those 25,000 miles are equal to more than two million on real roads.

Of course, it’s only right that a truck on which your livelihood depends should get that kind of testing and
development, but I’m not sure that it’s universally typical.

In fact Chris Patterson, the no-bull president and CEO of Freightliner LLC, told me that they could have staged the introduction more than a year ago and used Cascadia buyers as unwitting testers, but they didn’t want to play that game. Truthfully, the 10 or so trucks on hand at the launch — a mix of day cabs and 72-inch sleeper models — seemed better finished than many early-production trucks I’ve seen over the years. On the road there were no squeaks or rattles, and in looking at the details – how edges match up, for instance – I couldn’t find a flaw.

And I suppose that was my overall impression of the new beast: it seems well conceived and well finished.

Naturally, the acid test is in your hands, those of you who’ll buy it and work it and make your own judgements
100,000 miles later. I’m not a betting man, but this does seem like a well developed product.