The new Medium truck for Canada - 8x8 Mack

[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