The new Medium truck for Canada - 8x8 Mack

[maple_leaf_eh]

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/nation...lace-in-quebec

[rob love]

Nice looking truck. It is also nice to see it go to a North American manufacture and design, as opposed to a European or Eastern bloc model. I believe Tatra had a horse or two in the race. Not to belittle Tatra, as I am sure they are fine trucks over on the other side of the world where they belong, but they are not native to here.

So now the medium truck has gone from 2-1/2 ton to 5 ton. What will the load capacity of the HLVW replacement program going to be, or is that what the option for 600 more trucks is for.

[Grant Bowker]

Even scarier than Rob's comment on "Medium" having grown from 2-1/2 to 5 tons, the linked article gives a load capacity of 9500 kg (over 10 short tons). I hope they aren't asking the soldiers to shoulder 4 times the load as well.

[maple_leaf_eh]

The MSVS SMP is 10m long, 2.6m wide and 3.5m tall. That is 32 feet long, 8.5 feet wide, 11 1/2 feet tall. By comparison, the HLVW 9m long x 2.5 m wide x 3 m high. Pretty much the same size. But no one asked me.

[rob love]

Grant: Most of the SMP's normal rating was half the highway rating. So even in the good old days, a 2-1/2 ton actually had a highway capacity of 5 tons.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by rob love

Nice looking truck. It is also nice to see it go to a North American manufacture and design, as opposed to a European or Eastern bloc model. I believe Tatra had a horse or two in the race. Not to belittle Tatra, as I am sure they are fine trucks over on the other side of the world where they belong, but they are not native to here.

It looks very European to me - we do build the best trucks and cars in the world, mind you

Mack Trucks is a subsidiary of AB Volvo which purchased Mack along with Renault Trucks in 2000. If you have a close read, you will see Volvo is the driving force behind it and in fact the truck is a re-badged Renault Kerax 8x8 truck. Assembly will be (partly) native, maybe some North American component manufacture (battery, tyres, etc?), but major manufacture and design is European - so much for "native", eh?

[Frank v R]

just looking at the truck and having worked for Mercedes for 36 years I see no North American design features , this will be a foreign design assembled in Canada vehicle once again , I do hope that they make the truck a dumb truck for the battle field unlike the G-wagon, I know that the chassis will be outstanding considering the design features of European heavy trucks, Mack only in name, my 2 cents,

[Bill Murray]

This is quite interesting and new to me.

Just to add a little historical context to this deal, it is not Volvo's first foray into the Canadian market.

In the 1970's (I forgot the exact date) Volvo made a concerted effort to sell the Volvo Laplander to the Canadian Armed Forces in both 4x4 and 6x6 configurations.

When I was the National Director of Parts and Accessories for Volvo Canada in 1977-1978, all the staff knew of my interest in wheeled military vehicles and when I was transferred back to the US, they presented me with a couple of parting gifts.

One was the complete file of the negotiations from more or less day one to the end of the project. A huge amount of letters, proposals, engineering sheets, photographs, performance test evaluations etc. etc.

As my interest in post war vehicles flagged later on, it got filed in my basement archives until about a month ago when I sent the entire file to Clive Law for possible use in a future publication about post war Canadian vehicles. At least I hope he can use it.

The also gave me a huge presentation model, hand made, of the 6x6 version that is 1' tall and 2' long and must weigh 5 lbs or better. It is very well made, very accurate and seems to be made out of some sort of plastic composite materiel and painted the proper colours. Also has a nice plaque glued to the canvas top with a nice goodbye salutation, my name and the date. This still sits on top of one of my book cases.

I'm sorry I don't remember many of the details but I had not read through the materiel since the 1980's and did not read it again before sending it to Clive. I hope he can fill in dates, why it didn't take place etc. etc.

Just a little additional Volvo-Canadian history.

Bill

[Bob Carriere]

The Volvo models and the Land Rovers in both 4 and 6 wheel drive were tested at the same time the Chrysler prototype was test now being restored by Jack Innes.

I beleive the Land R were destroyed rather than sold as surplus but the Volvos were sold locally and seen on Ottawa streets (Carling Volvo dealer) one with a cracked intake manifold that no replacement could be found and was epoxied over and over again.

Cheers

[Robin Craig]

I realise this is a necro post but I just wanted to correct the previous post about the two Land Rovers.

They still exist and once again are being offered for sale by the smae owner since disposal

[maple_leaf_eh]

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-...m-project.html

With the requisite pictures, text, self-congratulations, and selfies.

For what it's worth, the SEV boxes are quite interesting. I'm familiar with two of the half-dozen. The dimensions are the same as a 20' sea can. The office box has a diesel 110-v generator, line conditioner, heater and air conditioner mounted in the first 2' of the nose end. It has a dozen cable and power in sockets. In place, the SEVs can be daisy chained together to a power supply and to whatever are the signals feeds. Like the MLVW SEV boxes, they have conventional channels and hardpoints for attaching tables, bins, lockers, and other clag. But unlike the earlier SEVs, these are 100% Pallet Loading System compatible to move around and be dropped in place. That is both a strength and a weakness, because the logistics loop has to be able to pick up the SEV box and move it, whereas before, the driver moved the truck and that was it.

The other version which I've seen is the map supply SEV. (I was asked for my comments on handling papermaps when I was a Troop WO at Mapping and Charting Establishment. And I relied on examples of map supply I'd seen in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the CF Map Depot) No conventional army will ever replace paper sheets. Period. Paper is dense and heavy. It has to store flat, and doesn't like being bent before issue. The traditional sorting, storage and resupply furniture is a steel cabinet with a bunch of drawers. For floorspace to open a drawer and manipulate an armload of paper would mean the drawers are all on one side, and that imbalances the truck. Therefore, I advocated and it was accepted, that the map supply SEV has map drawers over the chassis and drop sides for enclosed workspace. Instead of being 8 or 9ft wide, the deployed SEV is about 25' wide. That air conditioner keeps the paper flat and ready for issue. The trouble has been staff officers find a way to use the SEV as a briefing tent and sleeping quarters - much to the disgust of the Geo Techs who have to work in it.

[Bob Carriere]

Hi Robin

...... are they listed somewhere???