With the driver shortage reaching critical mass, OEMs now are turning their attention from what’s under the hood to what’s behind the wheel.
Navistar is in the process of rebranding its lineup of heavy- and medium-duty trucks, and the company’s new “DriverFirst” product design philosophy has permeated every new product introduced in the last year, including the International LT and RH (replacing the ProStar and TranStar) Class 8 tractors, the severe-duty HX and HV vocational trucks (formerly the PayStar and WorkStar).
“A fleet’s number-one cost of total operation is driver retention,” said Jeff Sass, Navistar’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. Navistar’s redesigned interiors involved input from hundreds of drivers and fleet customers. “[DriverFirst] is how we make trucks attractive to fleets for being driver-centric, safer and easier to drive.”
Common design improvements to International trucks include new switch placements, a steering column-mounted shifter, instrument cluster with customizable digital display, repositioned mirrors to reduce head movement and reduce neck fatigue and relocated tractor air supply and parking brake control valves.
Denny Mooney, Navistar’s group vice president for product development, says in conversations with fleet customers that fuel economy and other performance attributes are important, “but at the end of the day we found that if the drivers like our trucks, fleets will buy them.”
Technology and safety improvements also are playing a bigger role in driver and fleet preference, paying back in the used truck market for fleet owners and make trucks easier to drive for drivers, Mooney said. Take rates on disc brakes have doubled in the past year, and take rates for automated manual transmissions is now over 70 percent. Mooney says predictive cruise control is beginning to gain acceptance as fleets realize the value they bring to improve fuel economy, while take rates for collision mitigation systems are now above 50 percent.
