SOMETHING IN THE AIR
IN THOSE MILDER, less vexatious days before virus, vitriol and violence conspired to make America weird again, there was a trip in mid-2019 to Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) headquarters in Portland, Oregon.
The main objective, obviously enough, was to see how much work Freightliner had done in preparing its Cascadia conventional for the Australian market prior to the truck’s launch here a few months later.
Thankfully, like most trips to DTNA in Portland, 2019 also included a presentation at the full-scale wind tunnel – described by one wit as the ‘tunnel of shove’ – just across the road from head office.
This is a truly impressive built-for-purpose facility designed entirely to determine the most efficient and practical aerodynamic shape for shoving through the air a full-size, road-going truck and all the components that hang off it. Not just Daimler’s Freightliner or Western Star trucks either, but the heavy-duty trucks of every competitor on the North American market; several sitting in plain view in a nearby yard.
As the dedicated ‘air heads’ working inside the facility are only too happy to affirm, how do you know your truck is the most aerodynamically efficient unless you put it up against everyone else’s? Fair point, and with figures, charts and graphs to back them up, they weren’t shy about citing the market-leading Cascadia as the best in the business. The aerodynamic business, that is!
Funny though, at one time or another we’ve heard most of America’s top truck makers claim much the same thing at the launch of a new model. What’s more, over the past decade, all major American brands
