In 2018, I logged 92,690 air miles en route to trucking events across the U.S., Canada, Germany and Japan. Many of those miles were ticked en route to test drives – nine of them, in fact.
With truck orders at record heights this has been an important year for all OEMs, but aside from pumping trucks down the assembly line, a few new models made their debut.
Below is a brief rewind of the year in test drives incase you missed any of them when they were originally published.
Kenworth‘s hydrogen fuel cell Zero Emissions Cargo Transit (ZECT) T680 tractor, the fruit of a $7 million project between the Kirkland, Wash., truck-maker, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Southern California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District, headed off to Total Transportation Services and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach earlier this year.
Before it headed south, I took it for a spin around Paccar’s Technical Center in Mt. Vernon, Wash.
When I was a kid, I wanted to drive a truck. I didn’t even really care what kind just as long as it was a big one, but I always had an affinity for refuse trucks. They’re big, they’re loud and they sling heavy cans around like they’re nothing.
Mack’s LR model was a comfortable can crushing ride.
