Even though it is two years since i emmigrated to Canada i still find the length of the trucks surprising. They are fantastic on the highway and everything but sometimes the wheelbases can be a real nuisance. I recently delivered to a place in California with a reasonable sized yard and loading docks that you back down into. The angle of the ramp is not that steep and is actually shallow compared to most places in the UK and if i had delivered in my Magnum i wouldn’t even of given it the slightest consideration so i was suprised to see my diesel tanks nearly scraping on the ground when i got out to take my delivery notes in to the office.
What’s that a 270" wheelbase Mark? You have the 70" bunk & room for an APU so it’s a bit longer than mine & that’s bad enough in a tight spot, although it’s the complete lack of steering lock that causes more headaches, quite a few of our regular jobs are too tight to spin around in & yet Freightliners, Volvos etc manage it ok, I get round so far & have to stop before I knock my bunk off or just simply run out of room, sometimes I can’t get off a loading dock if I’ve slid the trailer wheels to the back until I put them back under the trailer again, still the best thing I’ve ever driven though, warts & all
Anyway I’m not talking to you, Las bloody Vegas, you lucky sod
I definitely know what you mean about the steering lock Mark but exactly as you say it is still worth all the idiosyncrasies to drive the “classic Pete.”
You got that right, as you know I’ve been a busy boy lately, spent most of the last 3 months in the truck doing 700 odd miles a day & never once have I been stiff or had a backache at the end of the day, that says a lot, before I came over my last motor in the UK was a series 2 FH12 500 Globetrotter with I shift & all the bells & whistles, leather seats with cooling fans in & all that fancy stuff, when I parked that up at the end of the day I knew I’d done a days work, after a big day in the Pete I’m as good as new & I drive like a proper Pete driver, on the floor with ‘no air in the chair’ so it’s only the truck suspension smoothing it out, the roads over here are far worse than back home so all that nonsense about them being boneshakers is just that, nonsense
Hi its nice to see what I have been saying for the last 25 years backed up by people who actually have driven the trucks. I never had a bad back all the time I drove my KW even when running eastern bloc and doing an all day all night and all day (sshhh). Yes it would have been better with parabolic springs on the front and air on the rear but that was how the man specc’ed it. The only place it was useless was trying to drive solo in Portugal, that didn’t earn me much money so I didn’t do it very often!
I will also claim that after 15 years and something like 1,200,000 MILES that it still had the original seats and upholstery (the seats had been swopped side to side).
Now doing agency work I rarely drive for more than 5 or 6 hours a day but I get a little stiff. The trucks ,a Volvo FM 4 years old (600,000KM) or Scania 124 2 / 3 years old (120,000 - 250,000KM) both show signs of wear on the seats , the Volvo’s need replacing, and although neither of the trucks has been used for nights out the Volvo’s bunks are knackered.
Keep up the postings Gavin
My Pete is the oldest of our trio, it’s an 03 and it is still in good nick. My seats have a little surface cracking but nothing other than minor cosmetic stuff, the dash is still intact and pretty much everything works on it. The centre drive temp sensor is gone, and the air cleaner guage is shot, but all the lights and switches still work.
For a 6 year old truck with a million miles on it, it is surprising how well it has stood up to the life. When you consider the extremes.
The steering lock is appalling, and it catches you out, but I can live with it. Like Wire, my tanks are a little close to the ground, and the steps always look vulnerable, but I look at it with the winter roads in mind and suspect I am being a bit harsher than I need to be.
On my first US company I had a niceish Volvo VN610 (see avitar) It had a quite good turning circle and one week it was in the workshop and on the monday I was given a brand new Frieghtliner Classic XL for the week, I took it to Bangor ME and it was like trying to control the QE2
I phoned the company and asked if I could use one of the old macks till my Volvo was ready
You say you hate them Pat, but I bet you’d soon want one back if you had to do your job in a current Euro cabover, forget for a moment the claustrophobia that it would induce & let us concentrate on purely driving one, I know these Petes & the like have a mahoosive bonnet sticking out in front but a 95 Daf for example has a worse blind spot to the nearside, then there’s the short wheelbase, can you imagine the ride they’d give on the roads over here, some of the bumps would pitch you straight through the windscreen, sorry windshield That’s all I can think of at the moment, but there’s sure to be a whole lot more & I don’t want to have all the glory, so it’s over to you boys
Back to the original point now Yes they can be a pain in a tight spot, but I only find myself in a tight spot at the occasional delivery so I can live with it & the old adage of positioning being the most important part of reversing applies even more so in one of these behemoths (always wanted to use that word )
I think it sorts the men out from the boys
I think that the way they look after things over here makes a big difference, on my return from each trip (usually between 2/4000 miles) my truck gets a full inspection & grease, oil is changed every 25000kms or thereabouts & any other issues are dealt with right away, if there’s a problem when I’m out on the road I go straight to the nearest Peterbilt or CAT dealer & it gets put right, obviously if it’s not safety related & I can get it home I do, but I don’t even have to ask, if I get a problem I go & get it fixed.
My company also like you to keep the truck clean, we get paid if we do it ourselves at the yard or we have accounts with various truck washes & as my tanks, step boxes & grille are a bit dull after the long winter, I can get them polished & they will foot the bill, that’s about $200 worth of polishing & they don’t bat an eyelid, a bit different from what I got used to back in the UK, admittedly my boss is a truck freak & specs them up as if he were driving them himself, but most firms are like that, some of the mega firms don’t care as much, but 90% of the trucks going down the road are clean & tidy.
I’ve always been an advocate of the philosophy (there, that’s todays big words ) that if you give a man a decent truck he will look after it & it certainly works over here.
Yes they can be a pain in a tight spot, but I only find myself in a tight spot at the occasional delivery so I can live with it & the old adage of positioning being the most important part of reversing applies even more so in one of these behemoths (always wanted to use that word 
)