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Why so few F models?


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You see them for sale from time to time there are usually priced pretty right good luck and yes when I was a young teenager they were everywhere I was just talking about that very subject a few weeks ago especially up and down 95 there was hundreds of them..... bob

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Back in the 70s the two best selling heavy trucks were the Freightliner and International cabovers. Then the feds eliminated  overall length limits and the new truck market shifted to conventionals. Same thing happened in the used truck market, cabovers had such low resale value that a lot were simply scrapped or glidered into conventionals. UPS of course cut up their F models when they retired them, rust took care of most of the rest, and when aluminum prices went up most of the aluminum cabovers got melted down.

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F model production ended around 1982. International, KW and Pete sold cabovers here through around 2003 and Freightliner through 2006. The KW cabover is still in production in Australia and Daimler is just now winding down production of the Argosy for export markets.

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Daimler dropped the Argosy glider about a year ago, but there might be some unbuilt ones laying about. Hostess had a lot of Argosies with 60 series and they sold cheap after the bankruptcy. Local Freighliner dealer had some 2015 or so Argosy gliders with 60 series IIRC that were set up with droms for boat hauling, but they wanted crazy $$$ for them.

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8 minutes ago, Ditchdiggerjcf said:

An MH or cruiseliner with camelback and heavy fronts sure would make a good lowboy tractor. An F would be better.

I’m getting ready to try to convince a guy I know to let me piece back together his MH that used to be owned and operated by Mack.

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Who needs a back yard when you could have a :mack1: Yard?!

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For a start, Mack made more B models than F models. Here in the rust belt B models had pretty much disappeared from the highways by the mid 70s when the newest were 10 years old. The last F models were built around 1982, and when I first tempted for peak season at UPS in 1992 they still had several F models in service. In fact, I didn't get to drive them much because the senior drivers preferred them to the GMC Astros and only the incoming MH and later CH models would pry the senior drivers out of their beloved F models. 

So the B models lasted about a decade in highway service and a few lasted longer in lower mileage vocational applications. The F models lasted over a decade and rusted out rather than wore out- Rumor has it that Hostess was still running a late 60s F model Western in Texas into the late 80s at least. The difference in survival rates are not because the F model was an inferior truck, the B model has a higher survival rate because many of them saw lower mileages in vocational service and a lot of collectiors liked the good looks of the B model and preserved them, while an F model was just an old truck that had done it's job and was scrapped when it could no longer worked. 

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