Happy Holiday Weekend!

We're coming into a long weekend.  Hopefully a lot of you are able to stay home and BBQ with your families.   The ones of you who are out there, rollin' the Memorial Sales goods down the Highways, bless you for your are another kind of soldier that doesn't get enough appreciation.

Happy Memorial Day.

~Laila

Eye Catching Trucks: United Van Lines - Golden Eagle Moving Services (Upland, CA)

I've noticed that the trucks and the trailers for moving companies are usually pretty spectacular!
Obviously I'm not expert on this particular subject, it's just an observation I've made through the years .... I have no idea why moving trucks have all those extra drawers & trailers that almost reach all the way down to the asphalt (I call them "skirts" in my head lol... I'm fairly sure that's not a valid term!!), but they look nice! (If anyone is in this particular niche of logistics & would care to enlighten me on the subject, I'd be most interested actually :))
Anyway, most Mayflower trucks certainly are headturners .... North American have some pretty sweet rides, as do United Van Lines.

As a truck enthusiast, I feel pretty lucky to have a logistics company right around the corner from where I live! The company is Golden Eagle Moving Services (United Van Lines), and they have some really nice trucks!! If I still live here when I retire, I'll probably camp outside their truck yard & stare at their semis all day long ... lol. (Not creepy at all, I'm sure ... of course I'll be an old blue-haired lady at that time so I may not be seen as a threat ;-)))

For now, I just wander up there with my camera every now and then and catch some of the trucks they have sitting out there. I pass their drive way on my way to and from work every day, and I always make sure to peer down the road where these trucks are parked sometimes to see if there's a beauty sitting out there. Below are some photos I took of a couple of their trucks, I'm sure I'll have more eventually.... (And if anybody who reads this is actually working @ Golden Eagle & you see some chick out there with a camera, don't worry... I'm really only photographic your trucks for my own enjoyment! :))

Anyway, here are 3 of their trucks as caught by my lens on a few different occasions. There's a Freightliner & two Kenworths - a T2000 & a T600 (if I'm not mistaken ...). Enjoy!

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! :)

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! :)