Whilst comfort sound insulation etc has usually improved with each new model, some makes have notably gone backwards, their newer offerings giving boneshaking rides where 20 and sometimes knocking on 40 years ago they were smooth riding on steel springs.
Inevitably there are a few lorries from your happiest lorrying days that stick in your mind and colour your appreciation of what follows, i enjoyed lots of different motors, from Buffalo, S80, Bseries, Crusader even a column shift 232MAN was a pleasure once you sussed the gears, moving further forward came more powerful wagons, DAF2800 a variety of ■■■■■■■ engined motors F90 MANs all good for the job i was doing at the time, day cab 3 series Scanias we used on the supermarket was probably the best and most reliable vehicle you could buy for that particular job having all round windows and the turning circle to rival a forklift, whilst in more specialised work (transporters) my favourite was an FL12 380 wagon and drag pulled like a train and it had the perfect car transporter body for multi drop work and the low FL cab just made it…also the last manual gearboxed car transporter i drove.
And that gents is where things changed forever, when the automated manual box became the standard, nothing has been the same regarding driving enjoyment since then, if you like actually driving lorries that is, most modern lorry drivers don’t, to them its just another job to be made as easy as possible, not dyed in the wool lorryists all too often they are on a second third or fourth career when the previous one died for many.
The gradual move to relatively smaller engines as weights have increased hasn’t helped because not only is it more awkward (assuming you even have a manual override option) to control gear changes at moving junctions etc but the obvious lack of low rev guts of these new engines, even though they boast high bhp figures they can be frustrating vehicles for those who still take a pride, making making good smooth flowing progress more difficult than ever…the new drivers don’t see it that way of course and many older hands have lost their lorryist mojo along the way, they just want an easy life with gearshifting and vehicle control done for them, newer lorries are starting to interfere with the steering and that luckily for me is where my time at the wheel will finish, by the time my current lorry is replaced i’ll be out of it.
Goodness sake we had standard 14 litre ■■■■■■■ for years running at 32 tons, coupled to a decent constant mesh box, 8 gears was more than enough for a proper engine it was only undersized (and imho often overrated) Swedish motors that needed 12+, those ■■■■■■■■ would accelerate superbly with the engine more than happy to pull high road speeds at no more than 1100 rpm given the right final drive spec.
I’m lucky in the respect i’m still driving, was given the chance to add some spec to suit my particulat job to my current vehicle before build, sadly a manual box was off the option list but i still have manual override and it doesn’t revert to eco every few minutes.
I have the rest of the electronic garbage same as everyone else, sadly that is here to stay with yet more to come, but whilst alleged drivers manage to ram each other up the arse due to tailgating and overturning the whole lot on perfectly straight roads we’re going to continue to get even more electronics and spyware.
