Freightliner’s ‘New’ Cascadia

The 2018 “new” Cascadia is worthy of the name and will, I think, be widely embraced by drivers.

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I have driven a number of Freightliner Cascadia tractors over the years and found them all to be more than satisfactory. The first was a pre-release model I took out for a two-day, 408-mile drive in 2007, three weeks after the official unveiling. It had a Caterpillar C15 ACERT engine, as that was prior to the launch of the Detroit DD15. I drove one of those for the first time in October of the same year, in a Cascadia naturally, a month before it was officially unveiled.

I have driven Cascadias in many configurations since then, from day cabs to natural gas powered, and even the Evolution model. I’ve witnessed the launch of several powertrain components and various bits of technology from the left seat of a Cascadia. I’ve also driven a few older units with more than 500,000 miles on them, and even in middle age, they were still pretty solid trucks.

Ten model years will have passed between the time Cascadia first appeared and when the initial production run of the next-generation version announced in September starts rolling off dealer lots in January as model year 2018 trucks. Many evolutionary changes took place along the way, but the basic hood and cab appearance have hardly changed from the first to the current Cascadia. With some added aero trim, the Evolution model took on a fresh outside look, but the cab remained much the same inside and out, at least to the eye.

The new Cascadia retains nearly the same cab/sleeper structure, with only a few small external changes, like the aero sculpting on the doors. The hood and the frontal profile of the new truck, however, are quite different. Almost everything inside the …Read the rest of this story

Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/equipment/article/story/2016/11/freightliner-s-new-cascadia.aspx