Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/751200
32 commercial carrier journal | november 2016 Staying ahead Freightliner's top tractor redefines itself BY JASON CANNON F reightliner's new Cascadia has much in common with previous generations of the truck – except that it's better in every way possible. Equal parts luxury automobile and space shuttle, the company's flagship on-high- way tractor has received a facelift and fine-tuning for the 2018 model year. Last month, I was able to take the new tractor on a roughly 200-mile jaunt through the Nevada desert and into California with "out with the old, in with the new" on full display. Departing Henderson, Nevada, the first leg of the trip was mostly at highway speeds. e drive southbound on Inter- state 15 provided fertile hunting ground to test Detroit's refined adaptive cruise. e DT12's skip-shi feature got my 400-horsepower DD15 up to speed quickly. I was following another 2018 Cascadia on the drive and used it as my pace vehicle. As we approached 65 mph, I set the cruise and tucked myself in line behind it. For 10 miles or more, I barely touched the brake or accelerator. When the truck ahead of me slowed, my Cascadia applied the engine brake to maintain a two-second-plus follow- ing distance, seamlessly doing the same when a car cut between us and disrupted the original two-second interval. At no point did I ever feel I had ceded con- trol to the truck, and as we exited the highway, I let the adaptive cruise handle all of the deceleration; I only applied the Bendix disc brakes to hold us at the red light at the end of the ramp. Detroit's fourth-generation Intelligent Powertrain Management uses GPS-based technology to maximize the DT12's fuel economy performance by anticipating changes to road terrain. All of that hap- pens without you really knowing it until you slip your fuel card into the pump. About halfway into the drive, we pulled off onto a state highway in a Joshua Tree forest to shoot some pictures, an idea we shared with a large group of French tourists – a collection of about 50 people loosely scattered among the trees snapping photos of each other. By the time I could climb out of the cab, we became part of the roadside attraction. e dense groves of Joshua Trees emptied of tourists who now were snapping pictures of themselves with the truck – some on the outside, some in the driver's seat. e French version of Facebook, I'm sure, was flooded with T E S T D R I V E : F R E I G H T L I N E R C A S C A D I A Equal parts luxury automobile and space shuttle, Freightliner's flagship on-highway Cascadia tractor has received a facelift and fine-tuning for the 2018 model year. The Detroit Assurance 4.0 suite of safety systems includes driver-friendly controls and is integrated seamlessly into the truck's dashboard, engine and transmission electronics.