convoyduel

Volvo and Western Star have completely turned the St Louis dump truck market into their sole territory from Mack and Ford/Sterling. Still don’t understand the Volvo thing.

Those models are absolutely amazing.

The R&D costs of designing Class 8 trucks and remaining on top of government vehicle mandates, emissions mandates and the like cannot be carried within the pricing of relatively low volume, high production cost Class 8 trucks. The European companies that are buying into American truck brands have R&D and engineering resources through their other automotive brands. Modem vehicle technologies like lighting, electrical systems, canbus and multiplex electrical architecture cannot be supported by Class 8 sales alone yet remain at or near the leading edge of the various technologies.

I see many of these trucks daily and have for years. I bought this black ‘02 KW T800 new in 2003 from KW of St. Louis. Super nice single turbo C15 475, 13spd, 20/46 on Chalmers. Was a tri axle with a 20k steerable lift that was bent or welded cockeyed from day 1. Chewed thru tires like crazy. They wanted the truck back to the dealer that installed it in Indiana but we never had time nor could afford the down time to fix it. Sold it to Mike Waller in 2007. He’s now running a dark red 2019 KW T800 quad you have in a later post. We ran out of Simpson in Valley Park and down off 141 in Arnold. I think Mike converted it to a quad a few years ago. He sold it to CJD last year.

Interesting that they went with the earlier CH style shallow rear wall cab, I guess to get the BBC down. Nice looking truck but the auto shifter is straight out of a mid 90’s setup. Also, without a crew cab option, they miss out on a lot of muni/state DOT sales. Hopefully they aren’t priced like the Titan was.

‘98 EPA Series 60 12.7L 500hp, Fuller 13 spd, 3.55 Meritor RT 40’s on Airliner 46k.

See if you can reference a gauge and sending unit from ‘02 RD690S vin 033790.

Are you sure it’s an E7? My 1990 CH613 has an E6-350. Decent truck just squishy on power.

That would be an extremely reliable truck. Won’t be the torque monster feel of a 475 Cat but it will be consistently reliable, easily serviceable and will drive very nicely. The EM7’s felt more powerful than the E6’s which were kind of slushy in the CH’s. The mid to late 90’s CH models are excellent money makers and don’t exhaust a driver. The only real downfalls were that the cabs tended to rust around the rear windows and underside corners if they ran in salt and weren’t cleaned much.

Trent, are you upgrading or having a problem with a current setup?

We are painting them. Air horns are in the works as well but we may stay with longer round Hadley’s because of the mounting differences.

Graphics applied. Still have to paint the air cleaners and battery box and swap the muffler for a polished stainless muffler.

Here’s an updated photo from this week. Still working on some details.

I’ve seen a handful of the HV’s here in St. Louis. Tried searching for the specs or other information about them and no luck. Mack lost a long time contract on this one. The ‘93-‘00 Postal Mack’s were very well spec’d trucks that made me a lot of money as the second owner of a bunch of them. Those MR’s were great fictional trucks but did beat the holy tar out of you. My favorites were the ‘00 CH612’s. Best money makers I’ve ever owned. I’m really looking for one of the last ‘03 CH612’s with the real CH hood but the drop window doors. Only a handful were made. I know St. Louis has at least one.

That’s a good year for the E7. Is the overflow tank on the firewall plastic or metal?

The movie studio is irrelevant.... I own the rights to the image and likeness and shared them equally with those that purchased the two surviving trucks. Don’t get me wrong....I didn’t expect a Mack-centric forum to love a Western Star. The exercise wasn’t just about copying a modern Rubber Duck.....it was about honoring what that character was based in and what the independent of that era was. As others have pointed out and this die-hard Mack fan found out....Mack corporate is not in the game anymore. For that matter, at least in my region, Peterbilt isn’t either. Unless you’re buying trucks a dozen at a time or buying some stock spec unit they ordered and have had sitting, they don’t have time for you. As someone who was fascinated by Mack and loyal to them despite all sorts of horrific experiences with products (ASET ring a bell with anyone?) for over 40 years, it was no easy choice to go with another manufacturer, but from an experiential level, it was painfully obvious who was interested and who wasn’t. Whatever spirit used to exist at Mack (and Peterbilt for that matter) that allowed them to pursue independents and small 2 to 5 truck fleets is dead and gone. Their product offerings aren’t geared for the small guy. I really hope they wake up and realize what’s been done to their iconic brand. In the end, I’m delighted to show this new truck and explain why it is the brand it is. The people at these shows aren’t the bean counters at a big company, they are the men and women that drive the truck, change the oil, swap out the brakes, grease the chassis, troubleshoot at 2AM on a freeway off ramp and try to rest in a truck stop parking lot next to a SWIFT reefer running wide open. These people work hard, start small and build on the successes achieved by being able to work on their own equipment without needing a laptop to plug in. What Mack is telling them is that they don’t add up to enough of a percentage market share to pursue. It’s a business decision and I get it. So was mine.

YOU WANT ANSWERS?? YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!!! Alive and well indeed here in St. Louis. Never stopped playing with trucks, just pulled back quite a bit from the public eye. So, to answer the question, I started with Mack a couple of years ago. Had some discussions at both a dealer and corporate level about what I wanted to do. Dealer seemed completely disinterested. Mack corporate was too enamored about chasing an NFL player that had the last name of Mack but had nothing to do with the industry. We pitched a pretty cool limited edition concept but just heard crickets in return. In the end, we were certainly welcome to buy a new truck and modify it, but we were stuck with a cheap, crappy grey interior with seats that look like they belong in an AMC Gremlin, an emissions motor, no single cab side exhaust and no cab mounted deflector. Aftermarket sleeper on a daycab Pinnacle or Granite was indeed an option but really wasn't thrilling given the stark lack of enthusiasm, the complete junk grey Gremlin interior and the shop queen emissions engine. In the end, the choice to look elsewhere stemmed from it being apparent that Mack corporate had ZERO interest in this project and continued to completely ignore and disregard any ties to what is arguably the single most globally recognized Mack truck ever made. Their silence was heard and noted. As indicated in the video description, I shed no tears and looked at other options with other dealers and manufacturers. I'm extremely happy with the direction we went. Right out of the gate, our salesman Greg understood exactly what we were trying to do and he pulled his local and corporate resources and contacts in to make it happen. We are putting on the finishing touches and modifications now. We will have a lot more to follow, including roll-out of a new website about the film and the trucks. Lots of good new information for the Convoy groupies.

That's a standard RS/RL7 hood on a later eastern model chassis with a sleeper from a Western Star. Yes, one of the originals was sold to a pair of collectors in eastern Canada. We still have the other. All/any others are just fan replicas.

They have been out of production for over 10 years. The molds ran thru the hands of several different manufacturers, so they go by various different names. The most common was AirShield.

I spent a little bit of time today again in the stack. The crash books are great and so are the service manuals. The most complete set of service manuals appears to be for the Fire Apparatus. Its hard to describe everything thats in the service manuals. Again, I did notice overhaul books for all of the Mack gassers as well as the older generation transmissions, rear axles, suspensions, etc. The books look to be last updated around '67. The fire apparatus books include the first generation R and CF models. There's no Brockway stuff that I've seen specifically, although there's several comprehensive manuals like Chiltons and.....can't recall the other brand, that include service, repair and overhaul proceedures on just about every make and model of truck from the 50's-60's era. I've thought about donating the materials to the Mack Museum or ATHS (wait....forget I said that) but the concern I have is that they might toss them anyway. Right now, I'm looking at digitizing the materials (best and highest interest first) and then offering copies in exchange for a set donation to the Special Olympics. Keeps people honest and those kids can make better use of the money than I can. I'll just blow it on more trucks I don't need. I'm checking with a reliable source on the copyright issues and the ability to password protect the electronic copies. I hope to have a preliminary list soon and will post it.

There have been a number of UPS owned trucks that made it out alive. A Diamond Reo worked around St. Louis for years painted red. There was an MH for sale on Craigslist maybe a year ago. One of the UPS Peterbilt 282's has been on eBay in California for the past several months. It's now been painted black and has aluminum wheels, but its 100% UPS. Doesn't come with a title and the guy wanted about $6K for it.

Ideally, I'd love to have everything digitized into Adobe Acrobat files but there are just thousands and thousands of pages. I'd rather see these become available for the masses instead of sitting on one person's shelf. I was going thru a couple tonight and found overhaul books on 510's, 707's, and even the old smaller cube engines. Zenith and Holley carb rebuild manuals were in there as well. What struck me is that while some of the information in those books may still reside in people's skill sets, a lot of that will disappear in the next 20 years. The information in print may be the only reliable way of making sure future generations have access to it. I'm going to pull everything out in the next few weeks and inventory it. That's going to be a job in itself. I'll post what I have and maybe someone has a viable idea on how to make it available for mass reference.

Christmas came early form me. Got an anonymous call to be a certain place at a certain time and bring an empty truck. Drove away with a pick-up bed literally full of original Mack factory/dealer literature and service books dating back to the 40's. Full service manuals, crash books, parts records, service bulletins, operators manuals, wiring diagrams and on and on and on. Crash books for F models, U Models, R Models, Westerns, MH series, Midliners and more. I'm just starting to really go thru everything. So far, my favorites are 100% mint Operators Manuals for a WS/WL, M Series Off Road Dump truck and the entire service manuals for Mack's fire apparatus line from their heydays in the 50's and 60's. Not sure what this is all worth, but I'm venturing a guess on priceless. All of the cardboard boxes you see are filled with service manuals.

I know that truck well. It is from St. Louis....Bridgeton, MO to be exact. The truck sat for probably 15 years. It's rough. Really rough. I believe it went thru the flood of '93 here in St. Louis on the sunless side of the waterline. It had a short water tank on the back. It went thru Ritchie Brothers auction in St. Louis in December of last year with the water tank for $5k. https://www.rbauction.com/1973-mack-rs795lst-ta?invId=7097816&id=ar Baskin buys the lion's share of their equipment thru RB auctions. They're one of the few other outfits at the RB auctions besides me that are bidding on the old trucks.

Just be sure you are aware of the buyer's premium placed on lots of $2500 or less. The 10% premium catches people off guard sometimes. Ritchie Brothers is decent but you really must be aware of what you're buying. I've seen a lot of old and worn-out items that barely make it across the bidders ramp. RB has a whole staff of helpers that do whatever they can to get the vehicle across the ramp. I've watched them drive trucks across with brakes locked up, parts dragging, etc. Their website usually has a bunch of decent photos of all parts of the item.