It’s interesting to see this particular International Harvester truck ad (below, I took some liberties above for visual fun) because it’s featuring something that is essentially gone from the American big rig truck market today: the cab-over-engine, short-length truck. These are still popular in Europe, where space is more at a premium, but here in vast, open, roads-vanishing-into-the-hereafter America, we mostly have big trucks with big long hoods and don’t really care about taking up needless space. I think that’s kind of a shame, because I love these designs, especially when, as shown here, you can see how dramatic and strange the proportions really are.
I’ve also heard these aren’t popular here because they’re harder to work on, and I’ve also heard stories about how those tilt-cab trucks, where the whole cab tilts to give engine access, used to be dangerous because in ones with sleeper cabs, you were likely to have a CRT TV come crashing through the windshield when you tilted the cab to get to the engine.
But I don’t think that’d be an issue anymore. Flat screen TVs would just bounce harmlessly off your head!
Seeing that strange narrow truck cab also makes doing something like this near-irresistable:
I know I’ve made speculative drawings like this before, wondering if International decided to adapt one of their cabover truck tractors into a sort of family car. Think of the commanding driving position you’d have! And fording large puddles would be so easy! Also, I bet the ride is just great, especially if you like a lot of pitching in your car trips, for that rowboat on choppy seas feel!
That’s like some Andy Warhol stuff right there.
As a former Fiat 500 driver who is now in a Yukon XL, shortness is massively underrated
Now I really want a big print of those tri-colored shorties for a wall. What a great photo!
Certainly that shorty two seat Ram TRX flying around these days is interesting and dare I say better offroad.
The vast majority of lorries in Europe are cab-overs, I guess because of the space constraints. I’m not sure I can even remember the last time I saw an engine-forward truck on the road.
It would mostly be in quarries and sometimes logging operations.
They were great around town, but over the road they bounced like a McDonald’s play pit. I learned to drive in one, and driving at any speed down the road was miserable. Also, no real front protection in the event of collision (says the guy who drives a Subaru Sambar Classic Kei truck).
Seriously, I think they lost popularity when Volvo demonstrated that you could build a conventional truck that did not require a football field to make a U Turn. It was all downhill from there. Freightliner actually came out with a very nice, comfortable COE truck some years ago. It even had steps that came out so you didn’t have to climb a ladder to get in one. But, still no one bought one, so Freightliner built what they thought was a better Volvo, and motored on (they didn’t, but that’s a whole ‘nother story).
I drove a Izuzu NPR cabover box truck and stakebed delivering trees for a nursery in college. The turning radius was almost car-like and the visibility from the front was excellent. Much easier than driving a U-haul of similar size.
COEs started to go away once the length limitation for tractor trailers was increased in the late 1970s IIRC. I’ve heard anecdotally that COEs don’t ride as well as conventional trucks because you’re sitting on the axle, which is part of the reason they’re not as popular.
Has that been remedied by fancier driver seats with their own suspension inside the cab?
No.
Not even close, an older COE is a punisher of asses.
Today’s “steering wheel holders” bad mouth cabovers, but they don’t know what they’re missing. I drove cabovers for Continental Baking, UPS, and the Postal Service and they were great for maneuvering in cities and loading docks. Ride wasn’t bad, the best riding truck I’ve ever driven was a White Road Expeditor with air ride and worst was a Freight/Mercedes conventional. Easier than a conventional to work on- tilt the cab and the whole chassis was exposed, and we didn’t take TVs to work ’cause we went home at the end of our shift!
I learned to drive in a 1981 White Road Commander COE. It was one of the first with air shock cab suspension. It rode pretty well. The 1985 Freightliner COE with standard steel spring suspension was a little rough but not bad. To this day I’d rather drive a cabover for the maneuverability and visibility.
Just give me one with two wheels, Segway balancing and the ability to turn on the spot.
My thoughts exactly.
Don’t get too worked up about crumble zones and shit: The regular contemporary VW bus T1 and T2 had a cab length of similar size, but was built from considerably less iron, and had you placed a lot lower than in the IH.
Are crumple zones much of a thing on semis? Seems like in either configuration you are leading with frame and engine block into whatever it hits
I used to see cab-overs all the time as a kid in the 90s and early 2000s, but after that it seemed like they disappeared from the roads quickly. My grandfather was a trucker so I was always keeping an eye out for all the different makes and body styles. For some reason, I remember that the trucking company Yellow used a lot of them.
Every once in a while I’ll see a cab-over in the wild, usually in fantastic condition and still pulling a trailer.
I saw an old 70’s cabover semi just this morning! I think it was a Kenworth
I see one around me pretty frequently. I assume it is someone local. They mostly disappeared because total allowed lengths were lengthened in the 80s and everyone moved away from cab over to longer trucks for comfort and aerodynamics. Now they mostly exist in the vocational field for garbage trucks and the like.
There are still a lot of cabovers in farm country. You see them more this time of year.
There is (was?) a CDL exemption for farmers driving their goods to market, so for many of them, it was more cost effective to buy a used rig and trailer instead of paying someone else to deliver the corn and potatoes each year.
Went down a clickhole on these trucks once and I found out there’s an enthusiast community that refers to them as “Cracker Boxes.”
I’ll let the reply-commenters handle the puns from here.
I’ve only heard that term in reference to the GMC trucks that were even shorter with a 48″ BBC (Bumper to Back of Cab). https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/crackerbox-the-1959-68-gmc-aluminum-cabover-trucks/
What a shame GM screwed those up so badly. GMC sold tons of Class 5 and 6s back in the day and continued to up until the 1990s. Most school buses were GMCs. But the Class 7 COEs just weren’t popular because it was either you got the 6V-71 and a tandem axle, or you got nothing. Meanwhile International was boasting about the featured DCO which you could get with three different engines (one being a turbodiesel), four different wheelbases, and three different axle configurations (single, dual, dual tag). For the GMCs you had to send them off to a third party outfitter just to get a bigger engine.
That might be a reference to the people that drove them. /s
Cracker box was specific to the GMC.
A larger crumple zone means a shorter driver.
My favorite cabover is the International box truck from Real Steel.
I have always been told the cabover was more to circumvent the total length laws, less truck sticking out means you could have a longer trailer.
Hey, would you look at that: You can step up in the middle of the wheel, just like on that Land Rover Forward Control 🙂
AND I would really like to see how the rest of the truck looked. So found this one, unfortunately with a sleeper cab, but the front end is the same:
https://www.proxibid.com/lotinformation/69319694/1964-international-cab-over-tandem-axle-vin-ef340033h-mileage-exempt-true-mileage-unknown
Oh but here’s a short one! Apparently it’s called an Emeryville. Beautiful name 🙂
https://www.flickr.com/photos/truckzrock081/50430486041
I’ve always liked the cabover style truck and thought the improved visibility would be an asset.
However, crashing one would be no bueno, and I’ve heard the ride is less than good and the steering takes some getting used to.
I much preferred driving cabover trucks to normal trucks, when I drove – better visibility, more car-like steering, much smaller turning radius, and the ride was never really bothersome.
(If there’s one thing I hate in this world, it’s recirculating ball steering. Ugh.)
Maybe add a cargo rack on top.
Hit the brakes hard and faceplate.
Am I just undercaffinated, or does that look like an International Janus?
Short cabs FTW. With BEVs not really needing engine access and not really being affected by the footprint rule I think we’re on the path to reviving cab-forward and cab-over designs.
What I really want is a cab-over FWD vehicle. with a 3 seat front bench. With 3 people up front over the front axle you have the most weight over the driven axle you can get practically with a FWD vehicle. With most FWD vehicle every pound you add to the cabin takes weight off the front wheels worsening the traction.
I hope Ox Delivers eventually starts selling their flat pack BEV trucks, I’d buy a shipping container full.
This seems to be the path Nikola is taking, which seems to finally be making actual trucks that are hitting the road, granted its also because they’re modifying Iveco trucks which are all Cab-Over, but it certainly seems to make more sense than other designs.
Jason, I think you have the cabover family car all wrong. Stretch it out, but leave the doors at the ends and put a cargo area in the middle. You’ll have some separation from the kids, plenty of cargo space, and the kids will have easy access to their stuff and will hopefully remain a little better entertained.
This was my dad’s Vanagon with the center seat row removed – just so happened to give him some space from anyone in back lol.
So longer as you leave both cabs, leave steering and engines at both, and change the gearing so that it goes the same speed each way.
Shortness is great for trails and tight parking lots, but not so much for crumple zones.
Came to say exactly this. The reason they went away was crash standards primarily. Yes we are in love with massive vehicles, but having your legs be crumple zones at 80mph is not ideal.
Good modern design and materials could hopefully make this a minimal issue – perhaps make the entire passenger portion of the cab able to slide back in an accident, so that the frame of the vehicle takes the brunt?
That might work for a semi or something that’s body on frame, but not so much for a normal van or anything, hence why the new VW EV van still has a large frontal area. They minimized it as much as they could to do well but yeah. Another issue is just the market for it, the design you spoke of would potentially work, but they would have to engineer it, and there’s just not enough of us weirdos who want it.
You’re not wrong. Vans might be able to do it with crumple zones *in* the passenger space, between passengers, so that the whole thing folds like an accordion in the event of an accident, but it probably wouldn’t be worth the engineering effort. Still, a cabover EV van would be ideal for maximizing interior space while minimizing footprint for parking, and as someone who loves in a city, I like this idea. Plus, they give an excellent view of the road and pedestrians, unlike a lot of modern vehicles.
(Can you tell that I used to drive a cabover box truck for one of my past jobs?)
The Canoo is a prime example of a modern cabover type van, oh excuse me “lifestyle vehicle”, I sincerely hope it makes it to production! https://www.canoo.com/canoo/
Where’s it going to slide to?
Also, what’s going to move it backwards fast enough to get away from crash forces in an accident that wouldn’t also hurt the people inside more than the accident itself? To “get away” from an accident, it would have to accelerate backwards to reach a speed significantly faster than the vehicle itself is moving forwards, all within a few milliseconds.
These went away due to relaxation of overall vehicle length regulations. The trucking industry has only recently barely started to consider safety as a real issue worth addressing.
I find cabovers aethetically pleasing, especially this one, but all I can think when I see one is that this moves the driver closer to the impact site.
You should see pictures of the International Harvester Sightliner. You had a window in front of your toes to see the impending doom up to the last possible inch.