Red Horse

Well for sure Fields followed a tough act. I guess he earned his stripes while he was Ford's guy at Mazda, but I sure don't think his career path could match what Mulally went through during his time a Boeing. And if one thing Mulally was acclaimed as being good at, it was to get rid of the old culture that existed at Ford. Think Fields remembers that??? He is a Ford groupie. Also, I think he is jumping into this self driving thing with a little too much emphasis. In time- and I can agree you can't afford to be late to any party today- but it seems he is drinking too much of the electric/self driving kool aid. Oh Teamstergrrl- 10-4 on your thoughts-and add..."if you want to be a player in medium trucks-in particular class 7, you need another diesel option (like 6cylinders!) as wellas a bigger gas/gaseous motor."

Young friend of mine is about to pull trigger on subject CH. 560,000 miles-looks good excellent rubber, airbags. Kid is a civil contractor and he is tired of paying big bucks everytime he moves his equipment so he thinks he is going to save money getting this and a 35 ton trailer. His biggest piece is a 320 Cat. I've tried to talk him out of it as I say-"hire out what you can and invest in revenue generating equipment" but he has this idea in his head-will also end up with a trailer dump too. Says this 485 is last of "mechanicals"- any opinions? He had a guy look at it who said it needs exhaust manifold and brakes.

My thought exactly on the Cat truck fiasco-but financially a drop in the bucket I'm sure given the huge sums spent on plant expansion. In a word, "arrogance" comes to my mind. I always say you could paint a pile of dog poop "Cat Yellow" and guys would stand around it saying..."isn't that the best looking pile of dog poop you ever saw"? Well those days are gone. As costs go up, and the competition gets tougher, all of a sudden the premium Cat demanded-and received- might not be working anymore. Reminds me of a friend who used to sell yellow Deere equipment. He told me, once he lost a customer to a Ford 555 TLB, he would NEVER get him back. The "triple nickel" might not be the machine the Deere was, but at the end of the day the guy had more money in the bank.

Well here is an eye opener-at least to me-more like a shocker. I have a friend who recently moved from Fla. to Mass. Property owner in Mass. Went to register to vote yesterday. No id verification of any sort. No proof of address, no photo id, no utility bill-NOTHING. But rest easy-did have to sign a piece of paper that all statements were true under threat of perjury. Rest easy guys-no voter fraud in this country.

Well finally got the Fairgrounds put back together. It was a great show-at least from the Club's perspective and we hope everyone who showed up had a good time. I had a thought-but too late -that I should do a post inviting all BigMack posters to meet at an appointed time for a photo shoot as was done at Macungie. In any case Jim Hancock managed to figure out who I was and while we were talking I saw "66DC75" (Rich P) walking by and we managed a photo-that is Rich on left and Jim in the middle-and looking good by the way for a guy that was in a pretty bad accident not that long ago. In any case did manage to talk to "Blackdog2" (EJ) and son "2stacksuperdog" (Matt), "Mr Cat" (Mike P) and "JackB61SX". Also was up in Fair office early getting the "accountants" set up as trucks were coming in and did see "PC 68" and "70Mack MB" but never managed to meet those guys. The problem when its your club's show is you never get to see it as you are chasing "issues". Maybe someday we will get it "right". And speaking of getting the grounds "back together", Sunday night club members Dave Nichols and Paul Silvia pulled all the trash bags and put away the drums. So Monday morning place is empty except for guys from Daley & Wanzer who show up with a Pete and drop deck to load up that FWD and also take the Acar and White 3000 out. I'm not paying attention to them and I jump in my Deere to load the trash bags for the trip to the roll off. I'm loading bags and all of a sudden this guy is next to me saying.."let me give you a hand". No clue who he is and he introduces himself- Herb Fleck- the guy owns Daley & Wanzer. Always heard great stories about what a great guy he was and now I know they are all true. Stayed with me until I got them all cleaned up and then he jumped in the Pete and was off! It's what this "hobby" is all about-great people!

You nailed that! I will bet the Chevy dealers will have that rebadged Isuzu in class 6 very quickly

Ok Matt, sorry about your friend.

Homerun with 3 on base!

Seems kind of confusing to me. VW makes a significant investment in Navistar. Iveco is a significant VW competitor on the world stage-I think. Iveco makes what appears to be a "worthy" conventional that if I understand the world scene, is best suited for AUS (KSC-agree?) Having said that, why would you enable the fox to get into the hen house?

Hmnn-will reduce fuel economy? Why does correcting a defective component lead to reduced economy?

Brocky-Not my turn for the Lear this weekend! Good luck with weather-be thankful it wasn't this last one! Bob

EJ-0800! look forward to seeing you guys.

Guys, A reminder, the ATCA New England Chapter show is this coming Sunday, October 16th. Lancaster Fairgrounds-Home of the Bolton Fair, Rt 117 Lancaster Ma. Long range weather forecast looks good! Hope to see many of you there. Bob

Nice- your scale comment can relate to this- I've posted before but I call it ..."60 years of 24" spokes"

what is tire size?

Thx Kevin- "Lanyard on the roof"-and here I thought the horns were going back on roof! Column mounted shifter?-obviously Allisons ?? RH- regional? Petroleum haulers? Would have thought they would be pushing the aluminum cab HX series for the bulk industry. In any case looks like it will be a real dogfight with F-Liner and the new Cascadia. So with these being built at Escobedo, looks like the two big volume OTR tractors will all be from south of the border.

Kevin-no pix?? Went to Navistar's website and nothing.

Thx Jim-excellent site. Amazing when you look at those spans and year they were built. How? Falsework as they went along? Must be some info on the web as to just how that was done. If you drive across the Tappan Zee bridge today and see the huge array of cranes its impressive. Doing something in early 1800's had to be equally impressive given what they had to work with.

I would also think shedding snow load had to be a big factor as well. Think of one of those spans without a roof and about 12" of wet snow on the deck. Plus I would imagine the wood framing and roof decking added to the structural strength??? A balancing act-the weight of the timber that went into the roof vs what it added to the strength of the span itself. As for B'dogboys post on that fire a couple of weeks ago that is an unbelievable loss. First thought is some jackass threw a cigarette out the window and it landed just right and had draft.

Is this WABCO the former American "Wabco"-and if so did that same Wabco buy the construction equipment line from R. G. LeTourneau???

Amen!

Wow-What town you in Jim?? Worth a trip. On the subject of leaf peepers I always said -Columbus Day weekend in New England was one of our biggest weekends for hauling a lot of gas!

Agree-but guess what-have Fox on and they just interviewed Shillary and told her Trump was likely to bring up Bill's sexcapades. She quickly says.."he can do what he wants, I'm going to talk about issues" And she's right- who gives a f--k about what BJob Bill got or who cares about a Miss Universe from 20 years ago. Trump has got to put his ego aside and move on to issues. Like I said, his handlers are either stupid or ineffective in getting him to set his macho man image aside and talk about substance. There are just too many negative things that keep piling up and he does nothing to "move on". We are going to hear him spout off again on Miss Venezuela. You are right Donald-she won a commercial beauty pageant and should have kept herself in shape for the sake of her "sponsors". She didn't. I don't give a shit about that. That issue is doing nothing to protect my grandkids future!! I want to know HOW you are going to restore jobs-and Ford by the way is making you look like a complete dumbass with your speech on forcing them back to the US from Mexico-Ford Donald employs MORE hourly workers in US and builds MORE vehicles in US than GM or Fiat-and by the way didn't take a government bailout. And the cars they will move out of that Michigan plant go for under 25g's and the new Ranger/Bronco will likely sell for well over 35g's. Oh and Ford brought back F=650/750 form the Navistar JV in Mexico and are building them in a Ford plant in Ohio. I know this-most of you guys probably know this-he doesn't???? He has so much good material to work with but choses to spout irrelevant bullshit. But what can you say about a 72 year old guy with blond hair? And just think what anyone of us could have done if we had been given a million bucks when were starting out and more importantly had immediate financial relief everytime we came close to going under. Stick to the issues Donald. Keep up the bullshit and we are going to keep hearing more about you insulting the handicapped reporter, making your expensive cloths in China or some third world shithole, etc etc.

Hah-I've shown my TWIC card every now and then to a TSA "officer" and I might as well have shown him my Sears credit card-no clue what he was looking at.