NEXT YEAR'S BIG NEWS

December 29, 2010 Vol. 6, No. 26

FIRST OFF, I hope you all had a fine Christmas or whatever else it is that you celebrate at this time of year. I'm actually still celebrating, on holiday this week, so this rendition of the newsletter will be brief. Well, briefish. I don't seem to write short very often.

I'm tempted to launch into a full-bore review of the innovations I saw in 2010, but the fact is it wasn't a spectacular year. No surprise in THAT statement. So I'll narrow things down to one.

The big story has to be the somewhat contentious birth of a new emissions regime and thus a new batch of engines with one of two approaches to limiting nitrogen oxide (NOx) -- an aftertreatment process employing selective catalytic reduction (SCR) or an in-cylinder solution using an enhanced version of exhaust-gas recirculation (EGR). As if there's anyone out there who doesn't know this, only Navistar chose the latter, and it has yet to get its engines down from the present 0.5 to the required 0.2 grams NOx level. For the moment it's doing this quite legally by way of credits, and it remains to be seen how 0.2 grams will be achieved. Enhanced EGR can do it, I believe, but perhaps with an intolerable fuel-economy penalty. Some additional gizmology may well be required.

That's mere speculation, and in fact the performance of any of these new diesels is really still unknown. There are relatively few International engines out there yet, nor millions of SCR motors for that matter. Orders just didn't materialize until the latter half of the year, and even then they were few and far between. Buyers were leery of the new technologies, many of them confused by which of the two routes to choose, and hardly anyone wanted to pay the 2010 price premium in a year when work was scarce and rarely compensatory.

It seems there are a lot of 2010 Cummins engines in the field compared to the other brands, and the company claims to have shipped nearly 37,000 EPA 2010-certified engines in North America through the end of September. It hasn't announced subsequent build/ship rates, but it does claim that the new engines are delivering up to 6% better fuel economy as compared with their EPA 2007 counterparts.

I've maintained all along that we won't really know much about any of the new engines for quite a while yet. A few of them will have racked up 60,000 miles or more by now, but so few as to be meaningless in the larger scheme of things. By this time next year we'll have a pretty good idea of what they're really made of, though I'm going to start some serious canvassing of users in the next few weeks to see what they think so far.

I do have some slightly unnerving evidence, albeit just one anecdotal case, of difficulty in finding diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), the stuff that makes SCR work. That's been one of the major fears expressed by some truck owners and a criticism levelled by Navistar at the SCR camp. The tale of woe comes from a friend of mine, a former driver and fleet manager who's semi-retired but keeps his hand in the game by delivering specialty vehicles across the continent one at a time. Needing DEF one recent evening as he set out on one of his long-haul deliveries, he couldn't find it at either of two truckstops in the heart of truck country just west of Toronto. In fact, none of the attendants he talked to at those places had even heard of DEF. He did find it at a truck dealership eventually, but this raised a few alarm bells.

Like, what happens at a truckstop somewhere in the boonies?

I can't imagine that this situation will last long at all once 2010 engines are out there in force, but for the moment it looks like carrying a jug or two in the truck will be required, just in case. It seems not to be an issue in the U.S. of A.

AND NEXT YEAR'S NEWS? Sticking with engines, the big news should be the promised introduction of the International MaxxForce 15 diesel from Navistar, likely to happen in March though we may not see it delivered and in revenue service until as late as 2012. A 15-litre motor based on the iron of the Caterpillar C15, with fuel- and air-management systems designed mostly by Navistar engineers, it will also power the year's other big news, Cat's coming on-highway vocational truck, the CT660. In that guise the engine will be called the CT15. The truck and likely the engine will be unveiled on March 22 next year at the ConExpo/ConAg show in Las Vegas.
 

The CT660 will be the first model in what Cat calls its "full line" of heavy vocational trucks. They'll be sold and serviced exclusively through the Cat North American dealer network, with production beginning after the introduction for delivery "later in the year".

The day-cab trucks will get engines branded 'Cat' but they will in fact be Internationals -- including a CT11 engine with ratings from 330 to 390 hp, a CT13 with ratings from 410 to 475 hp, and the aforementioned CT15 with ratings from 435 to 550 hp. The Cat CX31 torque-converter-style automatic transmission, with three standard locations for rear PTO-drive positions, will be an option along with many others from amongst Eaton's manual and automated manual lineup.

There's been some confusion about the CT660, and specifically whether it's based on the International PayStar or ProStar. Cat isn't saying, but the company's website shows a truck in profile that is very reminiscent of the PayStar and the original plan that I first unearthed in April of 2009 left little doubt. At that point I wrote that the truck was going to be built at Navistar's plant in Garland, Texas, home of the PayStar. As far as I know, that hasn't changed.

That said, earlier this year I was corrected by a semi-official Cat representative who said the CT660 would in fact be on a ProStar foundation. That's wrong, I believe, but clearly true of the Australian Cat truck that's already been introduced. Back in November I published a picture of a Cat tractor with obvious ProStar roots, and it was the Aussie machine. I also have shots of a very similar tractor that's supposed to be the North American version, though I'm less sure of my ground there so I kept that one to myself. I should have been more explicit with that photo, but I'm way out on a limb here anyway, so my somewhat educated guesswork is as good as yours.

Regardless, I'm excited to see this new entrant on the vocational scene, and especially to see how much of it is Cat and how much is International. Just to be crystal clear, the pic I've published here is of an International PayStar 5900i with setback axle. It's the right flavor and the right look in general.

You might be interested in a blog that's just surfaced, written by Gary Blood, the product manager for Cat Vocational Trucks. It doesn't say much yet, but I presume information will be dribbled out as the company tries to fuel the market's anticipation prior to launch next March. Not a bad ploy.

EATON'S HYBRID TECHNOLOGY IS ALL GROWN UP, the company says, announcing a week ago that customers of its hybrid systems have collectively accumulated more than 100 million miles of service, reducing fuel consumption by 4 million gallons of diesel fuel and harmful emissions by 40,000 metric tonnes. Big numbers.

The Michigan outfit adds that there are more than 4500 of its hybrid systems in use today on city and school buses and trucks in all manner of vocational service from package delivery to refuse collection. Eaton has also begun offering a complete line of electric-vehicle charging systems. This year also saw the company begin commercial production of its hybrid hydraulic system known as Hydraulic Launch Assist or 'HLA'.

It's my contention, supported by some recent third-party research, that hybrid power will expand dramatically in the next 2 to 5 years as budgets are loosened up and the price of diesel fuel rises. Not surprisingly, Dimitri Kazarinoff, vice president and general manager of Eaton’s Hybrid Power Systems Division, agrees.

“The early adopters of the technology are returning to place orders for hundreds of trucks and buses," he says.

FINALLY, SOME NOTES ABOUT SISU. Last time out I wrote about my own experience with tiny Finnish truck maker Sisu and about its recently inked deal to have Mercedes-Benz Actros cabs and powertrains supplied by the German firm for a small run of Sisu-branded vocational trucks. An odd little company, Sisu has been a mainstay of Finland's severe-service truck world for some years.

But I was reminded by several readers that Sisu has reached these shores too, if not in the form of a whole truck. The company's planetary axles are used in Mack's big and beefy Titan, for example, often seen in Quebec's logging industry. Likewise, you'll see brutish Kenworth trucks running Sisu planetary axles in western oilfields.

And one faithful reader sent in a shot he took back in 2005 of the very clean Sisu dump truck pictured here in downtown Zug, Switzerland. I'm guessing the cab is by Renault, because there was a formal Mack/Renault/Sisu connection around that time and the Finns used the Frebnch cab after they stopped making their own some years ago. Note the 5-axle arrangement with three of them lifters.

AND THAT'S ALL she wrote for 2010. I hope you'll forgive the fact that I haven't written any new product items this time, but I'll be back with more soon enough. For now, I'm going to spend some time with my family.

I wish you all a terrific 2011. May all your roads be smooth ones.

THIS NEWSLETTER IS PUBLISHED every two weeks. It's a heads-up notice about what's going on with trucking technology as well as what you can see at  www.todaystrucking.com where you'll find in-detail coverage of nearly everything that's new. Plus interesting products that may not have had the 'air play' they deserved within the last few months. Why not subscribe today?

I should remind you that I don’t endorse any of the products I write about in this e-newsletter, nor do I have the resources to test them. What you’re getting is reasonably well educated opinion based on three decades in trucking. And in the case of the individual product items, I’m just presenting simple news from the manufacturer or service provider, with the hyperbole mostly removed and   clarification applied.

If you have comments of whatever sort about Product Watch, or maybe you've tried a gizmo I should know about, please contact me at rolf@newcom.ca.

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COLLECTOR CARDS

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