No Mor e Medium Duty Ford Trucks?

[Keith Browning]

Is there any substance to the information I heard that the Ford Medium duty trucks are going to cease production shortly? I was told no LCF's or 650/750 Super Duty trucks. Obviously this would indicate the end of Blue Diamond Trucks - no?

[mchan68]

I thought that Blue Diamond Trucks was the alliance between FoMoCo and Navistar. Given the fact that when the 6.4L was put into production, the 6.0L did the great disappearing act from the options list of the F-650/F-750, leaving the Cummins 6.7L and the CAT 3126B as the only two choices. Now, with Navistar completely out of the picture, it doesn't surprise me one bit that Ford would be taking a departure from the medium duty truck scene.

[eastendpowerstroke]

I won't miss them!! will you?

[Bruce Amacker]

I don't know about MD's, but Light and Medium Truck magazine

reports the LCF is being discontinued:

 

From:

http://www.lmtruck.com/articles/petemplate.aspx?storyid=560

 

Navistar executives said in July that the cost of complying with 2010 diesel emissions regulations will add $6,000 to the cost of the 2010 MaxxForce 7, 9, 10 and DT medium-duty engines and $8,000 to the MaxxForce 11, 13 and 15 heavy-duty engines.

 

The V-8 MaxxForce 7 and I-6 MaxxForce DT will have an improved, high-pressure fuel rail, one EGR cooler (not two as currently) and use dual turbochargers. The heavy-duty engines will use a two-stage cooling system and have a 50,000-mile oil-change interval. The hood heights and shapes remain the same as the current models, company officials said.

 

Navistar is discontinuing production of the low-cab-forward CityStar truck and the V-6 MaxxForce 5 engine in early 2010 for the United States and Canada due to low sales, the company said. The truck and engine will be available in Mexico and other areas not adopting the 2010 emissions standards.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

 

The last I heard is that the CF/LCF was going to get a common rail 4 cylinder to replace the V6 275.

 

I'm also quite surprised that IH is jumping their prices so much, being that they are not going to SCR. It seems price would be their biggest advantage over the competition, and now they're cutting into that heavily.

 

It's going to be an interesting year.

 

 

[OHNO60]

AWWW MAN! imagine a world without any more LCF's. Priceless.....

[Jim Warman]

I recall an announcement/rumour/something about Cat getting out of OTR truck engines... too much trouble getting in line with upcoming emissions requirements.

 

English translation.... "R&D to clean these things up is getting out of hand... to add salt to the wound, a lot of this technology is still too new when it hits assembly line... icing on the cake is that too much of this technology is "fragile".... trying to balance affordable manufacturing costs with high levels of quality assurance and long service life is horrendous".

 

Business translation - the profit margin isn't what it could be with the volumes we are dealing in.... We aren't about to step up to fight for more market share - so we will capitulate in one area and regroup and concentrate on another.... no surprises here.

 

The industry is realigning itself... I think the victims will outnumber the winners (at least on paper)...

 

More money will go overseas... Overseas sweatshops will abound as long as the bargain seekers keep wearing their blinders... Overseas labour pools will likely enter a period of unrest (something like a modern day industrial revolution).. north american troops may be called in to quell unrest created by north american consumerism and good old marketplace greed.

 

Sounds like a good start for a Robert Ludlum novel....

 

Someone recently said "God is good, beer is great, the world is fucked....".

[dieseldoc]

What we at the cat dealers have been told by cat is: The over the road truck engine market is such a small percentage of their sales that it was not cost effective to continue production of an on-highway engine to mee the new emissions standards. They have teamed up with Navistar. The new 13L and 15L engines is our(cat) base engine components(block, pistons, crank, head, etc) but the rest will be navistar. CAT is also working with international to produce a CAT brand vocational truck which will be sold through cats dealers. The cat truck is supposed to help us as dealers better serve our customers in that they can buy cat equipment and trucks and have everything taken care of at one place.

From the prototype picture we have seen of the new navipillar engine it is a clusterfuck and going to be a giant pain in the ass to work on. Especially in those wonderful cramped international chassis. I really hope I am wrong. I guess we will just have to wait and see. The only truth and fact I can share is that as of Jan 1 2010 no more caterpillar on-highway truck engines.

[DieselD]

kinda sucks for us since we are geared around fleet work. 650s and lcfs are alot of work for us. without them thats less work to roll through our doors.

 

this emmissions shit is going to kill the diesel unless these major players dedicate time and money to make them cleaner to keep up with the rediclous laws each year.

[blown99]

Just got back from the regional service meeting with international. They too confimred that CAT is done for on highway engines Jan 1, 2010. The Cat International truck deal is going to be for export, called NC 2, as of Jan 1, 2010 the only engine you can get in any international will be an international engine - no more cummins, cat etc. The Maxforce 15 will be a cat acert 15 bottom end with Internationals head and fuel system (common rail). The current maxforce 11 and 13 are going to be redesigned with air to air aftercoolers, different fuel system set up (still common rail), clean all the junk off the top of the engine. There was no word about the CF or the vt275 being discontinued. All the new UPS cars are running the vt275. They seem to have less problems than the 365 with the exception of the injectors. There was no mention of the ford and navistar deal parting ways.

[hitechmech]

I've heard the lfc are being discontinued in one breath and redesigned in another due to cab configuration.

[LARRY BRUDZYNSKI]

Just thought about this....

 

GM dropped the MD line and so is Ford, so who is going to jump in and fill the void? Dodge maybe? Or do you think that IH,KW,Pete,Freightliner and Volvo may ramp up their MD's? Around here Ford and GM MD's are the majority.