Truck Talk: Machine Gun-Tested Edition

This week: Mack Trucks delivers its machine-gun-tested dump trucks to the Army; a former Navistar and General Motors executive thinks autonomous trucks will flip the script on passenger cars leading new technologies to market, and Western Star dealers want their demo trucks back.

Machine Gun Tested

Mack Trucks delivered its first heavy-duty M917A3 armored dump trucks to the U.S. Army this week, and it is pretty sure to have a satisfied customer.

After all, how many new trucks get strafed by machine gun fire as part of customer testing?

These did. 

During two years of testing at the Army's Aberdeen, Maryland, Proving Ground, the Army did its best to destroy the trucks.

"We will literally shoot it with machine guns and blow it up and see what happens," Lt. Col. Jeff Jurand, the Army's product manager for heavy tactical vehicles, told me in March 2019. "The most important asset to the Army is the soldiers. I can buy dump trucks. But I can't buy, train and replace soldiers."

In May 2018, the Army awarded Mack Defense a contract worth up to $296.4 million over seven years to produce up to 683 non-armored and armored M917A3s. The Army ordered 99 trucks in November 2020 and 56 more in March of this year.

The 94,500-pound M917A3 is based on the Mack Granite commercial model. The military version features an all-wheel drive 8×8 configuration and a higher-riding suspension better able to avoid road hazards like improvised explosive devices. 

An armored cab keeps the commercial truck's driver amenities but adds force protection to help keep occupants safe in hostile environments. See above.

The Army uses dump trucks for construction and maintenance missions on roadways, airfields, landing strips, supply facilities, and motor pools.

The new trucks are long overdue in a dump truck fleet in which some variants are nearly half a century old.

Man Versus Machine

Autonomous trucking software developer TuSimple is out with some early results of a safety comparison between human and robot truck drivers. 

Spoiler alert: The robots won. And they won huge.

The 10-week study based on GeoTab telematics with analysis by Fleet Nav Systems sampled 80,000 TuSimple autonomous miles and compared the data to a benchmark rate of critical driving events per 100 miles driven by humans at outside organizations. A sample:

Source: TuSimple

More to come, but the sample data suggests that autonomous driving really is safer than having a human behind the wheel. 

3 Questions: Terry Kline, strategic adviser, Embark Trucks

Former Navistar and General Motors Chief Information Officer Terry Kline signed on as one of six strategic advisers to autonomous trucking startup Embark Trucks this week. All are steeped in the transportation industry. Kline worked on advanced technologies at both Navistar and GM for nearly two decades before retiring as a senior vice president from Navistar in November 2018. Over the years, he formed some strong opinions about technology development.

I spoke with Terry this week at Embark's Investor Day in San Francisco.

FREIGHTWAVES: You make the case that passenger cars have and will continue to lead commercial trucks in commercial adoption. But …

KLINE: "When a truck is driving without a driver, I do think trucks will take the lead in autonomous vehicles because that is where the money is. At the end of the day, technology, innovation and investment will follow the money."

FREIGHTWAVES: What contribution can you make to Embark as an adviser?

KLINE: "I'm a truck guy. I'm the guy who built things with tires my whole life. So from that perspective, ‘How do truck companies think? How do they work?' They are influenced much more by the big fleets and the carriers. Both at GM and at Navistar, I worked in the connected world. I always tell people that if you think connected vehicles are important and game changers when you have a driver, knowing how that truck is performing and operating when you don't have a driver is even more important."

FREIGHTWAVES: Navistar chose to develop a ground-up Level 4 autonomous truck with TuSimple. Yet you chose to throw in with Embark, which takes an agnostic approach to autonomy, focusing on certain key components over a full truck. Why Embark?

KLINE: "Two things. One is that all OEMs, when they realize there is a boat that is going to sail — and it's called autonomous driving — are going to start picking up more autonomy partners because you can't afford to have all your chips on one. The other piece is that I'm a big proponent of open systems, open architecture. The Embark Universal Interface is an open architecture system that will sit on any Level 4-ready redundant chassis. Those are some of the things that made me want to work with the Embark guys."

Terry Kline, a strategic adviser to Embark Trucks, thinks autonomous trucks come ahead of cars because innovation follows the money. (Photo: Alan Adler/FreightWaves)

Give me back my truck

Back in March 2020, when the plan was to take two weeks to "flatten the curve" of COVID, Daimler Trucks North America delayed a plan to bring 1,000 Western Star dealers and customers to Oregon to experience the new 49X vocational truck. 

Two months later, it was clear the program was not going to happen anytime soon. So the brand pivoted and decided to send demo trucks to dealers for training and then for customers to get seat time.

Then a not-so-funny thing happened, according to Samantha Parlier, DTNA vice president of vocational market development.

"The number of dealers that called me and said, ‘We've got a problem. I'm supposed to keep this truck for six months and keep demoing it, and the customer is refusing to give it back,'" Parlier said. "It wasn't just one or two dealers. It happened on a regular basis, and that's what we're finding with people who get in these trucks.

"They just fall in love with them and that's probably the best compliment that I can be given."

Not funny. But certainly gratifying.

Samantha Parlier, Daimler Trucks North America vice president of vocational truck development (Photo: Alan Adler/FreightWaves)

Best of the rest

Cummins Inc. is beginning development of a hydrogen-fueled medium-duty 6.7-liter and a heavy-duty 15-liter engine. Part of the development work to be undertaken at Cummins' Darlington facility in the United Kingdom will be funded by the U.K. government. … Run on Less — Electric, the multi-month project of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency and RMI (formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute), reached the finish line this week with a finding that if all medium- and heavy-duty trucks ran on electricity, 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) would be eliminated from the atmosphere. … Volvo Trucks is sharing some of its customer information with electric vehicle charging and energy management provider AMPLY Power. In turn, AMPLY is sharing with Volvo its insight into what might deter a fleet from electric truck adoption. AMPLY is part of the recent deployment of five VNR Electric trucks to Manhattan Beer Distributors in The Bronx, New York.

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading. Click here to receive Truck Talk in your email on Fridays.

Alan 

Image by Still Photography from Pixabay