Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/100783
The dust has settled, and two engines dominate today���s North American heavy-duty truck market. Which one is right for you? BY JACK ROBERTS F or all the styling cues and creature comforts manu600-horsepower engine is no longer a vanity purchase: Spec���ing facturers design into today���s trucks, nothing de���nes one demands an unassailable business case in which the requirethe vehicle���s pure essence and purpose more than the ment for a lot of power and torque is an absolute necessity ��� usuengine resting under the hood. ally heavy-haul or vocational applications. Get any group of ���eet managers together for any length of Meanwhile, today���s modern technology has enabled engines time, and the conversation inevitably will turn to engines. Size, to deliver relatively high horsepower and torque while turning in displacement, power and application: Regardless of which fuel economy numbers unachievable a decade ago. engines a ���eet hates or swears by, those are the factors that matter most when it comes to making a truck work effectively for a busi- A 13-liter seismic shift? ness. Today���s heavy-duty engine market is undergoing fundaToday���s heavy-duty diesel engine evolution has settled on two mental changes that will affect how a ���eet specs future truck basic displacement con���gurations: 13-liter and 15-liter, the larger purchases ��� assuming it hasn���t already. of which led North American sales for many In yesteryear���s world of cheap fuel, horseyears. Lately, however, 13-liter engines have power was king, so for many years it only was emerged as the overall market leader. ���We���ve natural that the race to the top in the diesel been doing a lot of research on these engines engine world was de���ned by steadily larger lately, and we are seeing a shift away from 15-liter engines to 13 liters,��� says Kevin Baney, and more powerful engines. At the height of chief engineer for Kenworth Trucks. the ���Power Wars,��� it wasn���t unusual to see a More line-haul customers are switchlong-nosed 600-horsepower tractor blasting ing because of weight reduction and fuel down the highway turning 1,900 rpm on the MACK���S 13-LITER MP8 ENGINE HAS A economy bene���ts, Baney says. ���With our Pactach and maintaining a consistent 75 mph HORSEPOWER RANGE FROM 415 TO 505 car 13-liter MX engines today, we can offer without so much as breaking a sweat. HP AND TORQUE RATINGS FROM 1,460 TO them 385 horsepower all the way up to our But those were the good old days. In 1,760 LB.-FT. 500-horsepower Cummins option, which today���s world of $4-a-gallon diesel fuel, a 40 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | JANUARY 2013