Long-front trucks are popular in the United States, but flat-front, European-style cab trucks were also very popular in North America.
10 April 2023 at 15:29
If someone asked you to draw a long-haul semi-truck, what would it look like? This depends on where you are in the world. If you’re based in Europe or Asia, you’ll likely draw a taxi with a flat front, while North Americans will draw something resembling a dog’s head with wheels, perhaps without the ears.
But the “cab-over-engine” flat-front truck style was also very popular in the United States, so what happened? There are pros and cons to both ‘traditional’ long-nosed cabs and trucks, but the reason why Europe and America once favored the same flat-nosed cabs, and have since taken different approaches, is largely due to legislation, specifically laws relating to the overall length of the vehicle .
Trucks in Europe must comply with rules governing the maximum overall length of a combined truck and trailer unit, and for most of the 20th century the United States also had similar laws. But after a rule change in the late 1970s, the maximum length of American trucks now only relates to the length of the trailer, not the entire vehicle, and truck manufacturers and trucking companies begin shifting to larger cabs with a longer nose.
Taxis have certain advantages over traditional trucks, including better visibility and maneuverability, which is another reason why they work well in Europe where roads are narrower. But this is not as much of a problem in America, where the shift to long-nosed cabs has allowed drivers to have more sleeping space in the cab, and a lower overall cab height, making it easier to climb into.
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Moving the engine out in front of the cab and extending the cab’s wheelbase also meant that drivers were subject to less noise and vibration in long-front trucks, and because they didn’t have to tilt the entire cab to get to the engine, they didn’t have to spend 30 minutes arranging all those copies of magazines to block them out. Than to fly around the cabin before performing any maintenance. Finally, there is the security aspect. Trucks in Europe are limited to only 56 mph (90 km/h), but American trucks can go much faster, and we wouldn’t be keen on getting into an accident with a semi traveling at 80 mph (130 km/h) without… Anything but the windshield in front of us.
