Red Horse

Last ditch effort to try to remain significant in the world.

Overall, navistar was hanging on via the smaller (Class 6 & 7) trucks.

And the very large fine Uncle Sam hit them with, surprised in a way that they still any money.

E Z Pack and related companies are a large player in the garbage world.

Hope they don't get dragged down by "creative engineering"

On another note, they did recently announce they were coming out with a cab over (like the Sterling Condor-actually looks like a Condor) which would be a competitor of the Mack TerraPro (MR), "Autocar" (old White Expeditor) but in any case, aligning yourself with a particular body builder excludes you from the whole pool.

Didn't they do the same thing with mixers in the last year or so? An even dumber move IMO. Rear discharge mixers are yesterday's newspaper. While I'm sure there might be some jobs that make sense-like you are pouring a huge job and you just back up to a big concrete pump and blow the load out- for the most part, front discharge mixers rule. Most contractors don't WANT rear discharge mixers on their jobsites.

I wheeled my share of concrete off the back of LJ's and B-81's in my youth. Today?-I was pouring 8 sono tubes at our fairgrounds not long ago- front discharge mixer took no more than five minutes! Driver never left the cab until he got out to wash the chutes!

Kiss the rear discharge mixer business goodbye!

Trailer/Body Builders / Feb 22, 2013

Navistar, Inc. has completed its acquisition of E-Z Pack Manufacturing and is now operating the business.

The E-Z Pack product line includes the Hercules front loader, Goliath and Apollo rear loaders, and the Hercules Automated Side Loader.

E-Z Pack operations will remain chassis-agnostic and will continue to build and mount refuse truck bodies on all chassis by all original equipment manufacturers. Navistar will also build integrated E-Z Pack refuse bodies on International brand commercial truck chassis. Manufacturing of E-Z Pack bodies will remain at the company's facility in Cynthiana, Ky.

Jim Rogers will continue in his role as Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

The E-Z Pack parts division is in a transition process under the new Navistar ownership. UpTime Parts, a wholly owned subsidiary of Navistar, will be leading this part of the business with focus on supporting E-Z Pack customers.

Interesting. Given Navistar's financial position-it's not the best correct??- and given the hole they are trying to dig out of with respect to their EGR issue, I would have to wonder if this makes sense.

While we often read about companies divesting of assets when the going gets rough to ...."focus on their core business", I have to scratch my head on this one.

Here is a case where Navistar is spending money on something that MIGHT make sense- if all things considered the rest of their house was in complete order.

I think the "Allison" engines were in fact the turbines that GM fooled around with. Both Ford and GM were into turbines. Ford's first was a show truck that they had at the World's fair in NYC in 1964. Much later they built a turbine called the 707 and they actually had them installed in some Ford W cab overs that were in the company fleet hauling between plants.

I never heard of an Allison piston engine-other than aircraft engines from WW II. I think Allison built a version of the Rolls Royce that was used in the P-51 Mustang.

Ex- City Readymix Waterbury, CT supposedly the garage is still full of old macks

IMG_0228.JPG

Mike Trotto's -just the way he got it!

So guys, seeing all these Highpoint trucks made me think- it seems like a year or so ago there was always a truck from Highpoint on E-bay. Don't see that anymore-or is it my imagination?

My friend, I'm simply saying that the U.S. product line-up has a void since the Super-Liner was terminated in the U.S. market. The Titan compares with the RW713 for severe service operations, but there is blank place where the higher volume on-highway RW613 once stood. Mack Australia understood this, and created a lighter version of the Titan resulting in the 3rd generation Super-Liner. I queston why it is not sold here.

I applaud Mack Australia for seeing beyond Mack U.S.'s shortsightedness and, on there own accord, finding a way to creat a new Super-Liner to meet that long time market niche.

As for running down the U.S. market Titan, I have indeed stated that I don't care for the pimp car styling they gave it (excessive chrome everywhere), as compared to the more professional looking Australian market Titan. For this matter, I'm merely expressing my opinion. A little chrome in the right places is tasteful, but excessive use of chrome everywhere is tacky.

Just what IS Mack Australia? Are they too not operating under the same Volvo direction??

No this was Petes Tire Barn(was pricing for a friend).Was thinking of putting tubeless on my B81 if I keep it,they have an old skool style retread for 288- each.Said they were popular with dumps/garbage trucks.I was surprised that size has been in the same ballpark pricewise for a few years.

Bridgestones?? You don't have much of a choice either.

Outstanding! As are all the wise ass comments.

Thats why Mack is the "Greatest name in trucks." Our town went in with the state about 5 or 6 years ago and got a Freightliner. It was the worst thing they ever did. The truck can't plow snow up a hill with a load of salt on it. All the other trucks we have are R-models ranging from 1980-2001. They also got rid of the International last year to pay for another used Mack they just finished building.

A buddy of mine is chief mechanic for a nearby town- they did the same thing-bought a used heavy spec Mack that some other town had sold off. Had to do some work on it but they have the skills to do it-that is the key-qualified people make things happen!

Well I was at JC Madigan's today (One of the larger equipment installers in New England) and took a drive through the lot. Probably 12+ new F-liner SD 114's (tandems) for Mass DOT in various stages of body plow installation. Also 5 of so Navistar 7400's and one single axle Granite- all municipal plow trucks. Allnice heavy spec trucks, all Allisons.

But in looking st the chassis, I would have to say the Granite appeared to me to have the neatest plumbing/wiring. The F'liners the worst. all of the Mack wirting appeared to be tightly wrapped with a heavy tape of some sort that looked like it would do a lot to keep out dirt/moisture and the corrosion that goes along with it. the F'liners opn the other hand were pretty much all encapsulated with the cheap split plastic wrap that you get at AutoZone. The Internationals appeared to be a bit better Six pix attached: First 3 FG'liner

F'Liner]

Next Mack

Didn't have time had to go plow once he loosened it all up

Here you go Matt-a little Deere! We had about 24" . One failure- one of the tangs on my junkyard Fisher finally let go-cut some new stock, drilled it, welded back on good to go.

Just saw Hamden had 40"- highest in New England

Here is Chris's reply...

I was hoping he would be more understanding and open for debate but it looks like a closed case! LOL. I'll remove the pic but I have also contacted Hank's about the copyright and to see if we can use his stuff in a limited manner under the fair use act or maybe even in exchange for an ad banner? I am awaiting response from Hank's.

In the mean time, feel free to request permission from any of Hank's photographers before you post. They say that they are pretty flexible so I am curious to see how that goes!

Barry, Great response. What you have proposed to him is a great compromise that a REASONABLE person would find hard to refuse.

My dad sees your cousin(i think) that has the granite tri-axle down working at Gateway all the time.

No that is Tom. This guy is Dave-retired O & G driver.

Where? Maine timber co pvt roads??

What was the deal with Farnum? My dad was telling me they use to haul stone out of Tilcon NB and dump it at Pine Rock load it back on trucks and haul it down to beard. Seems to me it would be easier to just run it over the scale instead of dumping and reloading.

Matt, I was talking to a cousin of mine today and mentioned this. He said that apparently Tilcon got in some sort of legal hassle with an aquisition and was forced to provide Pine Rock with material. In essence he confirmed just what your dad said. He did not have an explanation of just what the relationship was between Farnum and Blakeslee. I can remember though that I was never loaded by Blakeslee -it was always under the hopper for straight stone or by Farnums loader for process.

The Camerota's where my grandmother's cousins. There was Jerry who was at one time VP of Blakeslee. Jackie who was President of the Operating Engineers. Mike and Frank where his sons. I was told Jerry wanted to buy the ready mix side of things after Westinghouse took over. I think he wasn't going to have the cash flow to buy a fleet and aggregates, so it never worked out for him. In the early seventies Foxon leased or rented the Chapel St. plant in order to complete the Rt. 40 connector. Clark and Barone was bought out by Len-Crete. The plant in Westville or Woodbridge was closed and everything was moved to Leonard's Mather St. yard in Hamden. I think one of the Barone's stayed on with Leonard as a salesman for awhile. I remember Leonard Pipe manufactured so much pipe, they rented empty lots up and down Dixwell Ave. to stage pipe before it was shipped.They actually had two sales offices.One in NYC and the other north of Albany.

Wow-talk about small world. Didn't Mike and Frankie start or buy a sand and gravel operation somewhere on the shore-Madison or Guilford? They were into drag racing too. I remember Mike graduated from the Univ. of Idaho with a degree in biology or game management or something like that. Anyway he didn't do anything that summer except work on Frankie's new 63 1/2 Galaxie with a 427, dual quads. the authentic drag package with fiberglass nose, lightweight seats, floor mats etc. They took the car home from Bradford Motors, pulled the motor and shipped it to Holman Moody and then spent every Sunday at the strip. We came back from Dover in NY one Sunday night and Monday when Mike got up to work on the car, discovered someone had come into the yard and stole the two four barrels off it during the night. I went back to school in Sept. and they ended up selling the car-talk about pissing a lot of money away! Much more expensive then fooling around with old Macks

The garage on Waverly St. used to be called the "barn". That was originally where the horse and wagons where kept 100 years ago. Mixers and dump trucks where parked on Waverly St. and all the prestress trailers and horses where kept at Pine Rock. When a good friend of mine started working there he was #136 on the seniority list. They weren't at the Sargent Drive garage for very long before they moved the trucks to another garage on Middletown Ave. then eventually Rt.139 in Branford. By then Blakeslee Prestress and Blakeslee Arpaia Chapman where totally seperate. Suzio took over the concrete and operated Pine Rock and Chapel St. for a year before unloading all the property on Pine Rock Ave. and selling the asphalt plant to Tomasso. Suzio wound up with two Riteway mixers and about six DM mixers and I think one B61. Suzio also employed most of Blakeslee's mixer drivers as well. Blakeslee now is hardly a shadow of what they once where. I don't think they ran those quad steer A car's for long because my dad or the few guys I know that worked there don't remember them. My dad was a laborer at the Chapel St. prestress plant. He said they had at least two mixers assigned every day to that plant pouring single and double Tee's.

Wow-you guys are taxing my memory. Your dad might remember the Camerota boys- Frankie ran a Hough at Pine Rock. His brother Mike-not sure what he did but I think he was there too. Their father was a supervisor there. And I think their grandfather went back to the turn of the century with Blakeslee. I think he got all the laborers right off the boat when they got here from the "old country". I also remember hauling crushed stone out of Pine Rock-but wasn't the scale house and the hoppers run by Farnum? I remember the nice old guy in the scale house- let's see if he were alive he would be about 120

The other thing I remember about Pine Rock. You guys remember Clark-Barone Ready Mix from Woodbridge? They pulled their stone out of there with a Ford F-1100 Super Duty single axle with a 10' body that was about 5' high at the boards. I was a young kid-and a Ford guy- and loved that truck-talk about an overload!

Bob- I was just thinking you might be thinking about Tomasso who was bought out by Ashland Oil of England who now go's under as Tilcon. They had a lot of B-models and DM800s too at one time.

No Matt. I know Tomasso sold out-but in the back of my mind I thought someone had told me that Suzio too had been bought by one of the big Euro outfits. Nice to know they are still family owned. Speaking of Tomasso I hauled my share of asphalt out of the Sackett Point plant-but I'm sure that is gone now.

And speaking of oldies, the other day I found a concrete slide rule calculator that was my fathers. A "freebie" from "C. W. Blakeslee & Sons, Waverly St. New Haven" Long before they sold out to Westinghouse. Even your dad probably wouldn't remember, but they had Autocar mixers with a second front axle

Yep from what i know they only scrapped 2 Rightway mixers besides that everything is in the quarry. they reorganized a lot of it over the summer.

So Matt- Are all those boneyard trucks the property of the new owners OR do they belong to the Suzio family???

Usually when one of these big foreign outfits take over they clean house-no sentimentality over old trucks-its scrap value to them.

Some good info/pics on both sites,but the format is absolutely horrible....

Agree 100%. I'm on this site every day- ATHS if I'm really bored. Plus I can't swallow some of the stuff that is being done-like spending how much money on those big MFX/Consolidated signs! How long will those be an "attraction"?? Seems like the Federal govt. Got some money let's spend it.

After building heavy trucks for 40 years, I was disappointed to see Ford sell its heavy truck division to Freightliner in 1997.

Freightliner (Daimler) purchased Ford's technology, tooling, and assembly equipment for the all-new "Louisville" and "AeroMax" models (known as the HN80 series) for an estimated US$200 million. Daimler picked up the enormous investment Ford had in the HN80 program at a bargain price (Ford is said to have invested US$500 million).

Combining Freightliner and Ford’s heavy truck unit gave Daimler nearly 40% of the US truck market.

The real irony here is from the HN80’s introduction in 1996 until production ended in Louisville in December 1997, Ford saw strong heavy truck sales.

After Ford agreed to sell its truck unit to Freightliner, though being a lame duck, Ford's heavy truck unit with the cutting edge new HN80 showed it still packed some punch. Although Ford had a modest 9% market share in 1996, the HN80 allowed Ford dealers to rally in the first quarter of 1997.

Ford sold 3,777 Class 8 trucks in the first 3 months of 1997, up 8.2% over the first quarter a year before. Ford sales rose 50.2 percent in March 1997, compared to the same month a year before.

Overall, 1997 first quarter Class 8 sales of 39,102 trucks were off 5.7% from the previous year. But Ford's 1997 first quarter Class 8 market share rose to 9.7%, placing Ford ahead of Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp. which held a 9.1%. Peterbilt was the only other truckmaker that saw first-quarter sales rise.

By the way, all the Ford Transit Connect vans being sold here now (the smaller Transit van) are imported from Ford Otosan (they’re imported with rear seats to evade the high truck import tax, then the seats are removed and shipped back to Turkey)

The “Ecotorq” engine range in the Ford Otosan Cargo consists of three engines. They’ve been producing a Ford 7.3 liter 260hp powerplant (24-valve in-line 6-cylinder – not a Powerstroke) since 2003.

The Cummins ISL has been offered from 2008 (Ford calls it a 9 liter Ecotorq) rated at 320, 360 and 380 horsepower (380hp is asking too much of a 9-liter engine outside of fire and emergency vehicle applications).

The engine sizes have Bosch electronically controlled common rail. With SCR, they can reach Euro 5 (roughly EPA2007).

Ford Brazil and Ford Otosan (Turkey) seemed to be following different paths for many years. Now there’s an effort within Ford for the two units to work more closely together. Ford Otosan has been pushing Ford corporate for funding, and convinced Bill Ford in 2011 to allow them to take the lead in Ford commercial truck production and become responsible for global sales (Ford Otosan wants to grow with more int’l sales). Now, Ford Otosan is responsible for developing models for all world markets. They’ll share R&D efforts with Ford Brazil but Ford Otosan is in charge.

All the talk about Ford Otosan’s “all new” Cargo left me with high expectations. However it’s just a tweaked version of the same old cab, and the front fascia is not very appealing. The front end appearance of Brazil’s current Cargo is also strange.

The new-for-2012 premium 1846T 4x2 tractor gets a 10.3 liter VGT-equipped 460hp engine with 1,549 ft-lb. of torque. A 322hp engine brake can be paired with a ZF retarder attached to a ZF 16S2220 manual overdrive or 12AS2130 direct drive AMT. Ford’s not saying but this is the Iveco “Cursor 10”. It’s a good engine if you’re not overloading.

It has a 7100kg (15,653lb) front axle and Meritor 11,500kg (25,353lb) rear axle, and a 40,000 (88,185lb) GCW.

To me, without a modern full-width 2300mm cab, the Cargo still isn’t ready for Europe and most global markets.

Thx-great amount of info- I post a lot on the Blueoval website and there are a couple of other "heavy truck" guys as well But no one seems to have a clue as to where it is all going.

Bought my share of Louisvilles in the old days-as well as Macks- the Fords were in my book great value. Did the arm rests fall off?

Yes. did the frames break? Never!

eurk , this would have been worst , the truck they make today is not even a Cat at all . my opinion .

I agree. With all the bad press they took with their last 3406 highway engines, can't believe they had the nerve to do it. Then again, you could spray paint a pile of horse---- Cat yellow snd a lasrge number of people would say...."that is the best horse---- I ever saw!

How would you like to be a Navistar dealer? Just what they needed- something else to cut into their heavy vocational sales-their csb with Cat logos.

My friend, let's be clear once and for all. Mack Trucks no longer exists. The legendary company was acquired by Volvo Group on January 2, 2001. The brand "Mack" is marketed by Volvo Trucks North America. Sadly, Mack is little more than a nameplate now.

It's no different than the Cub Cadet product by MTD sold at Home Depot. It's not the Cub Cadet product produced by International Harvester. MTD is marketing a once respected nameplate for as long as it works.

In our great country, in which trucking, industrial might and design innovation figure so prominently in our history, it is unbelievable that the majority of trucks on the roads of America today are produced by the Germans and Swedes.

It is utterly humiliating that America no longer has the ability to compete and lead in our own domestic truck market.

We could save our carmakers despite their self-inflicted woes, but we couldn't save the most prominent and respected truckmaker in American history?

If you feel Volvo engines (rebadged as Mack MPs) are the best available today, that's great. I'm glad you're getting good service from them. I agree with you that Volvo engines are solid performers. DAF, Iveco, MAN and Scania engines are as well.

But arguably the most advanced and impressive truck engines right now are the Mercedes-Benz OM470 (DD11), OM471 (DD13), OM472 (DD15) and OM473 (DD16).

I think Cummins gets a bad rap whenever they have an issue, simply because Cummins has such a broad market share. Cummins remains a respected American engine manufacturer with an incredibly diverse product range.

Navistar's Maxxforce 11 (MAN D20) and Maxxforce 13 (MAN D26) should perform superbly now with SCR at EPA2010. MAN used Massive EGR to meet Euro-5 without any issues, but never intended these engines to run Massive EGR at Euro-6 (the near equivalent of EPA2010). MAN switched to SCR to meet Euro-6. Navistar was basically trying to do the impossible.

You seem to have a very broad knowledge of the world scene. Off topic but could you answer this. Ford still builds the Cargo, including one that looks very similar to the clss 7 Cargo that was last built at Louisville before they gve the biusiness away to Daimler. But they also build a bigger version-in Brazil and Turkey. The Brazil built truck has an 8.3 Cummins but the Turk built truck has what they call a 9 liter "Duratorque". What or should I say, who builds that? Ford also just announced they would build a new "world" heavy truck combining the Brazilian version and the Turkish version but that it would be bigger rated for 56 tons with a new fuel efficient engine.

Any clue? I have seen videos of the Turk trucks and they are heavy looking cab overs. In some footage they show quad axles with what look like 15/18 yard dump bodies. in very severe service-can't imagine the road network in that part of the world is hardly "Interstate" spec. Wonder if any of those components could end up in US Fords when Bluediamond is dissolved and class6/7 and maybe baby 8 goes to Ohio.

Volvo Group absorbed Mack Trucks on January 2, 2001. Mack Trucks' Hagerstown plant became a Volvo Powertrain facility to produce (mostly) Volvo components for the North American market.

http://www.volvotrucks.com/trucks/na/en-us/about_us/facilities_locations/volvo_powertrain/pages/powertrain.aspx

Volvo still produces some legacy Mack-era T300 transmissions, but Volvo typically promotes Eaton manuals and their own single countershaft i-Shift AMT transmission (deceptively rebadged as the Mack mDrive). So due to low volume, the superb Mack Maxitorque T300 triple-countershaft transmission is expensive, which inherently has a negative effect on sales (The writing is on the wall there).

At the time Volvo acquired Mack Trucks, Mack was designing an AMT version of the Mack T300 transmission. But Volvo shunned Mack engineering and terminated that project, favoring their single-countershaft i-Shift over the superior triple-countershaft Maxitorque transmission.

Volvo has had Meritor producing Mack rears since 2004, owing to a global contract Volvo has with Meritor.

The Mack cab is 26 years old now. Volvo will introduce a new global cab soon and Mack will get a narrowed version of the full-width COE version.

Today's Mack-branded truck is nothing less than North American Volvo chassis with a legacy Mack cab and hood. Volvo isn't trying to appeal to the old Mack customer base. Volvo is clueless about the value of the Mack brand, about why a Mack truck needs to actually be a Mack truck. The Swedes don't get it......not at all.

Hmmnn. I wonder if that is why the literature is so sparse about frame specs. In the old days they would list PSI, Section modulus etc. Then again I just have a bunch of the glossy stuff they handed out at Macungie. The less specific they are, the easier it is to mask the commonality of the two. And if you are correct on the new global cab, that will make the case stronger to shut Mack down-hate to say it but that is typically what happens in most "mergers". My bet is people in the corporate structure are known as "heritage Volvo" or "heritage Mack". Guess who always has the upper hand.

There's no such thing as a Mack engine now. Only Mack-branded Volvo engines are available. The Swedes are of the opinion that their engineering is superior to Mack engineering (American know-how).

Volvo D11 = Mack MP7

Volvo D13 = Mack MP8

Volvo D16 = Mack MP10

Different color and software, that's all. The engines are produced by Volvo Trucks North America at the Volvo Powertrain plant in Hagerstown, MD (the former Mack Trucks facility).

What Volvo has done, reduce an American icon to a mere shell of its former self, should be a crime.

Vad Volvo har gjort, minska Mack till ingenting, bör vara ett brott.

Thx- I thought Hagerstown was still called a "Mack" plant. What about the transmissions? Those are built in Hagerstown too -as are the rears?

My fear is at some point, the Swedes will say...."duplicated effort- why do we have another marketing organization, why are we building ANOTHER cab structure, etc. etc. And someone will say.."yeah the old Mack customer base? Pretty soon they will all be gone". Case closed. Hope I'm wrong.