All hail the Cabover Trucks!

Poor cabovers, sorely neglected in trucking photos around the globe :) At least in the US where the cabovers are no longer a hot item and most of the ones we see on the road are fairly worn.

I love seeing the cabovers that have been taken care of over the years, there's a couple of them that I pass in traffic every day to work that have a shiny new coat of paint on them and seem to have been pampered by their owners.

Cabover trucks are the "flatnose" trucks where the cab is positioned on top of the engine. It was due to length regulation that the cabovers were popular. Until 1956, trucks could only stretch out 42 feet from nose to taillight and no doubt, a company would want most of that length to go to the trailer where they keep the goods, thus the flat noses made very much sense! In 1956, the length regulations were increased to 65 feet and in 1976 to 75 feet. Since 1976, the COE's have been on a decline in the United STates but are still popular and necessary in other parts of the world.

Anyway ... I recently went to Universal Studios and I was able to check out the back lot. There were some nice trucks there, I found a couple of cabovers that caught my attention & here they are.

First, my affection for Kenworths made me stop and take a few shots of this one. I don't know what year it is, if anybody does, please eduate me :)

I think the Kenworth COE is pretty stylish, even after a few years in the business, like the truck below :)

Here's another truck I found, it's a custom Universal Freighliner COE, by the looks of it, used to pull generators (most likely out to movie sets etc). For a cabover, this one is pretty sweet! :)

Famous Trucks: The BLUE MULE

THE BLUE MULE (White Line Fever)


A few weeks back, I received an email full of photos & great information about the trucks that were used in the movie White Line Fever. The truck is famously known as the Blue Mule!
All the information and photos this gentleman had gathered was excellent material for my blog, so please enjoy the below posting & photos of the Blue Mule.

Truck 1: (original truck)

1975 Ford WT-9000, given to the movie producers by Ford Motor Company. NTC-400HP Cummins engine (even though in the movie they said it’s a NTC-350 Cummins), 13 speed transmission.

After filming, the truck was auctioned off by Universal Studios. In order tell the difference between truck 1 and 2, you can look to the windshield wipers. Truck 1 has both wipers pointing to the passenger side. Truck 2 has vertical windshield wipers.

Here is a shot of Blue Mule and by the position of the windshield wipers, you can see that it is truck #1 that is in use here.


Truck 2: (original truck)

1974 Ford WT-9000, NTC-400HP Cummins engine (Again… even though in the movie they said it’s a NTC-350 Cummins), 13 speed transmission, also given to Universal by Ford Motor Company. Mainly acquired as a backup truck, in case anything happened to truck 1.


Windshield wipers of truck 2 are vertical throughout the movie, except for 3 shots where they point to the passenger side (which indicates that it is actually truck 1 being used).
The mudflaps were also taken on and off and rotated between trucks 1, 2 & 3 during filming.

This truck was auctioned off by Universal after the movie, all of it except for the mud flaps, which were inherited by truck # 3!

The two Ford WT-9000 trucks were given to Universal for the sole purpose of getting smashed up during the movie and in the end, both trucks had originally been destined for the scrap yard.

Universal Studios, however, had other plans. They ended up keeping these trucks for themselves and they bought another 2 used trucks that they damaged & wrecked during the movie shoot, that way they could sell the original 2 trucks, no doubt for a hefty profit!

Truck 3: (stunt truck)

1972 Ford W-9000, NTC-430 Detroit engine, 13 speed transmission.
This was the 3rd truck that was given to Universal by Ford Motor Company to be used for the movie.

Even though it was given to the movie as a stunt truck, the truth is it was only used for one single stunt: To swerve off the road and hit a wooden sign in order to avoid an oncoming big rig.

Here is the front cover of Ford's brochure for the W-series from 1973, featuring none other than truck 3 from the Blue Mule!

Though the truck was a left-over truck and labeled as "used", in reality it was practically brand new and had only been used by Ford Motor Co to showcase the Ford W-series. The only reason it was labeled “used” was because of its year.


The intention of this W9000 was to be kept by Universal and they kept it until 1985 and then it was auctioned off.

Current location for all 3 trucks are unknown.

The following two trucks were purchased by Universal for wrecking and crashing purposes. As mentioned previously, this was the intention of the trucks that were arleady given to Universal by Ford Motor Company, however Universal decided to keep those trucks intact, most likely for financial reasons ...

Truck 4: (stunt truck)

1973 Ford W-9000, NTC-350 Cummins engine. Not much modification was needed on this truck, except for a paint job.
Prior to the movie, this truck was owned by an owner-operator who sold it to Universal.
The truck was heavily damaged and was scrapped in early 1976. It was mainly used for interior shots. Windshield & side windows were removed in order to film inside the cabin.

Here is a random photo of a Ford W-9000 - although it's not one that was used in the movie!

Truck 5: (stunt truck)

1965 Ford W-1000 which came from a trucking company in Vancouver BC, Canada.
This truck was heavily modified for the movie to match the original trucks. It got a brand new grill, new exhaust pipes, new exhaust stacks … well the exhaust stacks weren’t brand new in fact. In order for Truck 4 to look brand new, IT was the recipient of brand new exhaust stacks, thus truck 5 inherited the old smoke stacks from truck 4. If you look closely at the grill & head light brackets of truck 5, you can tell that it is a W-1000 and not a "true" Blue Mule!

Here is a photo I found of a 1965 Ford W-1000 (not the one used in the movie!)- as you can see by comparison, it is actually a little different from the W-9000s.

This truck was used for only 2 scenes in the movie, one with a snake in the cabin and in the final scene, this is the truck that crashes at the end of the movie.
The truck was scrapped right after filming.

Below I've posted some additional photos of the Blue Mule that I've found around the web:

This photo is a replica of the Blue Mule and resides in Fort Worth Texas.

Big Rig Chronicles: The Freightliner

Since I've sorely neglected the trusty Freightliner in my blog, I thought I'd make it up by publishing the Freightliner history as my next post! I got most of this info from Wikipedia, I went through a lot of information and pulled out the most essential timeline of the Freightliner.

Hopefully you find it useful & interesting, if anybody has any more info & photos to share regarding the Freightliner history, feel free to send me a line or two! :) I'm always looking to improve my knowledge of those 18wheelers!

Freightliner - Coronado model

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

1930s - Very few trucks at this time had the power that was required to get up the mountain roads in Western part of the US, which prompted Consolidated Freightways to produce their very own line of trucks.

1942 - First Freightliners were produced in Salt Lake City, Utah, but production was interrupted by WWII. After the war, production was moved to Portland, Oregon where the first Freighliner was sold to a fork lift manufacturer (Hyster). Records show that this truck covered 4 million (yes that is MILLION) miles before surrendering to old age and has proudly earned its place at the Smithsonian museum, where it can be seen today.

Freightliner - First model sold to Hyster

Due to distribution issues, Consolidated Freighways joined forces with White Motor Company, who had dealer networks all over the US and Canada, a union that lasted for over 25 years.

1950 Freightliner

1949 - first truck sold to an individual
1950s - one of the first trucks with an engine powerful enough to pull two trailers

1974 – CF and White Motor Company parted ways, leaving Freightliner Corp. to stand on its own both as manufacturer and distributor of its trucks.

High cabover engine was also introduced around this time. Due to the overall length regulations at the time, which measured from the nose of the truck to the rear bumper of the trailer, these high cabover engines accounted for over 50% of the US truck market.

Freightliner High cab-over Engine (70s)

1981 – CF sold its manufacturing business and the entire Freightliner brand to Daimler-Benz. Chino & Indianapolis plants were shut down.

1982 - Surface Highway Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 – Weight & Length standards changed. Overall length was no longer measured from nose to taillight, rather it was the length of the trailer alone that could not exceed 53’ (although some states had stricter regulations).


1983 Freightliner


1992 – Freightliner became the leading heavy truck in the US
1996 – Acquired American LaFrance, a 130 year old fire engine manufacturer.



1974 American LaFrance


1997 – acquired Aeromax from Ford Motor Company & renamed it to Sterling.

Sterling truck

Sterling truck



1998 – Acquired Thomas Built Buses, which was the producer of all school buses bodies & forward control chassis.

In my search for a Thomasbuilt bus, I came across this cool photo! They are testing to see how strong a Minotaur bus is, Thomas places this 18,000 pound bus on top of the Minotaur EL. Cables pulled the bus on top of the Minotaur, which had a cradle on top to hold the bus in place. The cables were then released, alloweing all 18,000 pounds to rest on top of the bus. Pretty cool huh?



2000 – acquired Western Star trucks and all its assembly plants (the successor to White Motor Company)
Also acquired Detroit Diesel Corp, although it was acquired by another branch of Daimler Chrysler, the operation eventually migrated into Freightliner.
Several fire engine manufacturers were also acquired and rolled into American LaFrance.

2001 – plants were sold & consolidated in order to save money as DaimlerChrysler was up to their eyeballs in used trucks that they couldn’t move.

2002 – Consolidated Freightways shut its doors for good.

2005 – American LaFrance was sold to a private equity fund. DaimlerChrysler’s attempt to roll American LaFrance production into the Western Star plant had failed, as the fire engines were too specialized for a high-number mainstream manufacturing plant like Western Star.

2007 – DaimlerChrysler sold Chrysler and renamed for Daimler AG
Freighliner laid off 800 workers and relocated its manufacturing from Portland, Oregon to a new plant in Mexico. The Portland plant remains open today and serves as production plant for military vehicles.

2008 – Freighliner LLC became Daimler Trucks North America

Freightliner - Coronado
Freightliner - Columbia

Freightliner - Classic

Freightliner - Century

Freightliner - Cascadia model

(All these nice photos were borrowed from http://www.freightliner.com - if you want more 18wheel eyecandy, there's plenty more there to browse through!)

Photos: 1996 Freighliner Classic

I love it when I open up my email and there are truck photos waiting for me! :) Better than Christmas if you ask me, especially since Christmas tend to get a little less fun as a person grows up ... truck photos are always fun, no matter what age you are ;-))

This week, I got a couple of really nice emails, full of wonderful truck pictures & I can't wait to post them all.

Today's truck was emailed to me (well not the truck itself unfortunately, but the photos anyway), it's a very nice-looking 1996 Freightliner Classic.
I'm excited to get good photos of Freightliners as I don't have too many of those... I really don't know why, I see quite a high number of Freightliners every day ... maybe it's just the idea that I always see them around so I'll get to photographing & writing about them some day ... :)

Anyway, check out the nice pics below, this is a very nice rig indeed! :)

Arizona Trip - Part 1

We recently went on a vacation to Arizona (Flagstaff, Grand Canyon), and boy oh boy was there ever eye candy for a truck enthusiast such as myself. I was in danger of contracting a case of whiplash as we passed truck after truck after truck after truck for the 7 hours or so that it took us to get to Flagstaff.


Still not equipped with cameras on my sideview mirrors (That'd be cool, that way I could take pics while I drive!), a lot of nice photo ops passed me by, however I did manage to get quite a few nice photos anyway.


Outside our motel, there were several big rigs parked over night, and also we were lodging right next to the I-40, so I went outside early in the morning & was able to catch quite a few beauties as they whizzed by above me on the freeway.


I wanted to post a few of my photos here. There were a LOT of them and I've split them up to avoid big rig overload ;-) (Is there such a thing?)

Anyway, below are a few shots from AZ and there are more to come in future posts.

Most of the ones below were taken really early in the morning, sun is barely up. It was great!

My favorite line :-) Steven's transport. Finally managed to get some pics of my own :)

More Steven's transport...

... and another one ... or two :)

Beautiful W900, love how the morning sun hits the rooftop.

The reflections in this photos kind of messed it up but it's a W900 so I couldn't help but include it anyway! (Yep, that's right, it's my blog, I'm entitled to play favorites ;-))

Sharing the road with Big Rigs - BLIND SPOTS!

I have posted this one before... but I think this will be one of very few posts that I'll keep reposting and reposting until I stop seeing people driving like idiots around big rigs ... which, let's face it, will probably be never so bottomline, I'll probably be reposting these safety posts until I die.

Take a moment please, and familiarize yourself with the danger of passing or driving too close to big rigs! There are blind spots everywhere, and YOU need to be aware of them even if you are not a truck driver. It could save your life!

75% of all car-big rig accidents are caused by the driver of the car, not the truck driver .

I commute a lot. I drive about 35 miles each way to and from work, 5 days a week, and boy do I see some stupid driving, especially when it comes to small cars vs. semis. (And mind you, ALL cars are small compared to big rigs….)

In this post, I want to write about blind spots.

Blind Spots.

All cars have them. There is nothing as scary as readying yourself to change lanes, you think that the lane next to you is wide open and then all of a sudden you spot a sucker that has been lurking in your blind spot for the past few minutes. It’s enough to give a person a heart attack.
On a regular car, the blind spots are few & they are small. We also have the luxury of being able to turn our heads and look over our shoulder before we merge, to make sure nobody is riding in our blind spot. A truck driver can’t do that. If he turns his head and looks over his shoulder, he’ll see the back of his cab!

A big rig has a lot of blind spots, and some of these blind spots do in fact span across several freeway lanes. Let’s go through them.

1. Front of the Truck: This blind spot ranges out about 20 feet ahead of the semi. The driver won’t see you there. Merging in this close to a big rig can be fatal. Make sure you leave about 4 car lengths between your car and the big rig.

2. Rear of the Truck: About 30 feet directly behind the trailer and you should keep a distance of 25 car lengths. The problem is that when you drive behind a big rig, you can’t see what is going on ahead of you in traffic. You can only trust that the brake lights on the rig in front of you are working properly and that the truck driver is able to hit his brakes in time should something cause a sudden stop. If you are driving too close to the rear end of a big rig and a sudden stop happens, it too could be fatal.I suppose that if you are driving behind a big rig, which sometimes happens, especially on busy freeways, you should drive at a speed that will allow you to stop in time should a sudden stop occur.

3. Left Side of the Truck: a 3-lane span, starting at the end of the truck cab and running down the entire length of the truck. Passing on the left side of a big rig is the correct thing to do, however don’t linger. Make your passing a quick one so that you will be visible again to the driver as fast as possible.

4. Right Side of the Truck: Some trucks have a sticker on the back that says:

<<>>

This sticker isn’t for comedy or posted as a joke. Passing a big rig on the right hand side could very well be the last thing you do in life. I don’t mean to be morbid, but that’s a fact. The blind spot on the right hand side of a big rig also fans out for about 3 lanes and runs the length of the truck, but this blind spot is a lot less forgiving than the one on the left.The truck driver may very well see you when you enter the blind spot, but if you linger there and he no longer sees you, he could forget that you are there. If by any chance he has to make a sudden swerve to avoid a collision or an object in the lane, there is no chance he remember that you are still next to him if he can’t see you.

I bring up the word “fatal” a lot because if you end up in an accident vs a big rig, the chances of you walking away could be minimal.

I read somewhere that 78% of small cars vs big rig accidents end in fatality.

78%!

And these small cars are the ones I constantly see darting in and out of traffic, passing on the right, passing on the left, cutting off big rigs left and right (and everyone else for that matter). Seriously. You may think you’re the best driver in the world but be cautious when passing big trucks. Unpredictable incidents in the roadway happen a lot, and you want to be visible to a truck driver at all times so that if he does have to make a sudden move, he knows you’re there!

So…blind spots. We all hate them. I’m sure truck drivers despise them. But they’re there. Just be aware of them. And don’t pass trucks on the right!

Old & Faithful!

A while back, I put out a request for photos of old trucks! Of course I love the new shiny trucks that roll down the highway, however I feel the old trucks aren't given enough credit! :) The wear and tear speak loudly of their faithful service on the road, the peeling paint a true tale of lots and lots of miles rolling through wind, rain and snow storms ... Grills with holes in them and lights that barely hang on ... It's the sign of a true warrior!

Anyway, I did get a couple of responses! Thanks!! :) (And I'm always looking for more!)

The first one is photo sent to me by a gentleman named Dale, it is of an old Ford truck, which is really cool since I am a Ford girl at heart! :) The photo was taken in 1991, while the truck was fairly new still but the trailer sure has seen its share of roadway! :)

Another one was actually a magazine scan that was sent to me by a friend of mine. This is a 1953 Kenworth, my friend's father inherited it after a family friend passed away, and he is keeping it alive by taking it to truck shows around the midwest.

Kenworth is my favorite big rig, I was very excited to get these magazine pictures!

Gotta love these old trucks... (as long as they don't break down in the lane as you're coming home from work in the afternoon.... lol .... even though, oh well ... sh!t happens, right?? :))