Tennessee International Dealer Turns Heads With Fuel Efficiency Demo Truck
Cumberland’s C10 LT Series Tractor was developed in close cooperation with International and a host of aftermarket suppliers.
Photo: Cumberland International
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Cumberland’s C10 LT Series Tractor was developed in close cooperation with International and a host of aftermarket suppliers.
Photo: Cumberland International
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In the 1960s, when performance was king, it wasn’t unusual for dealerships to take stock muscle cars and customize them to create highly desirable street machines that are avidly sought after by collectors today.
Today, a Cumberland, Tennessee, International dealership is using the same concept to provide high-performance trucks to its customers. But the emphasis today isn’t on horsepower: It’s on fuel economy.
We first featured Cumberland International’s C10 project in a June 2016 cover story on breaking the 10-mph barrier. That truck was based on an International ProStar.
The second phase of Cumberland International’s C10 truck project is a specially tweaked International LT tractor optimized to consistently deliver fleets 10 mpg in real-world trucking operations. The truck is the brainchild of Matt Smart, fleet sales director, and sales representative Patrick Mendenhall, who wanted to “think outside the box” to show customers that International was “making a great product again” while also demonstrating that a 10-plus-mpg truck is achievable to operate in day-to-day fleet operations.
Instead of waiting for a truck manufacturer’s “Super Truck” or “Truck of the Future” to roll around, Mendenhall explained, the folks at Cumberland took the project into their own hands and spent most of 2013 building what the dealership calls the RX-C10, with a downsped Cummins X-15 powertrain, advanced safety systems and aerodynamics.
Mendenhall said he and Smart were designated Cumberland’s “Fleet Team” by Cumberland dealer principle Terry Minor and began gathering information from resources and vendors to conceptualize the most aerodynamic truck possible.
“With ever-changing technology, this was no easy task,” Mendenhall said. “Thankfully, many vendors were excited to help in any way possible to get this project started.” That said, he declines to specify exactly what improvements the …Read the rest of this story
