Commentary: Europe is Different
Rolf Lockwood
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Rolf Lockwood
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What are the differences between trucks and trucking in North America versus Europe? Our trucks have become increasingly similar, but there are limits.
I’ve been flying across the pond for decades and I’ve written stories about trucks and engines and the highest of electronic technologies. I’ve done dozens of plant tours, spent many hours on test tracks, and driven quite a few miles on roads both urban and rural.
Once, after driving north from Stockholm, across the Arctic Circle, and then down the length of Finland, I even got lost in downtown Helsinki while piloting a Volvo Globetrotter with a full trailer behind. Long before the days of GPS.
In a nutshell, the differences between here and there are countless, yet there are also similarities. Trucking is trucking in some senses, no matter where you are, and nowadays technology walks across the water in both directions every day.
My very first transAtlantic trucking trip was to Finland in the winter of 1985, and it illustrated the wandering technology point a lot earlier than you’d expect. Hosted by Nokia, I was the lone journalist amongst a group of tire dealers. The company set me up to drive with a logger in the boonies outside the city of Tampere. Great! Told that he drove a made-in-Finland Sisu cabover, I was excited to try it out.
Imagine my surprise when I found a Cummins 400 under my right foot and a Fuller 13 in my right hand! I wanted something far more exotic. Still, those 8 hours going from forest to mill plus a truckstop lunch in the middle – with a driver who spoke no English and a meal I couldn’t identify – were fascinating. Among the lessons: Drivers are drivers and, despite a distinctly Finnish configuration in that Sisu, trucks are trucks.
Except they’re …Read the rest of this story
