Capacity Trucks Introduces Sabre Terminal Tractor at TMC
The Sabre, as Capacity Trucks’ vehicle is named, was rolled out Feb. 16 at the annual meeting of American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council here.
President Scott Lord told Transport Topics that he estimates the terminal tractor market at 4,500 to 5,000 units per year in North America, although “that’s rough — nobody tracks it, [and] there’s no registration data,” he said.
Capacity’s primary U.S. market for terminal tractors is warehouse and distribution, with about 60% to 70%, Lord said. Ports make up the rest, though they account for a greater percentage of its overseas markets, which is some 15% to 20% of its sales, he said. Capacity is based in Longview, Texas.
About 20% to 30% of Sabre’s market is for operations that require trucks to travel on roads to terminals or warehouses. The rest are off-road.
John Sommers II for Transport TopicsThe average price of an on-road terminal tractor would be in the mid-$90,000 range, Lord said, but “these things get so customized, depending on the customer’s needs” that they can cost much more than that.
“What we tried to do with this truck is to focus on the entire cost of operations for our customers,” he said, adding that part of the reason the truck is called the Sabre is because its goal is to slash the cost of operations.
Capacity Trucks plans to have its current TJ5000 model phased out by June with Sabre production rolled in by then, “depending on customer orders,” he said.
Separately, Kalmar’s T2 terminal tractor, released at last year’s TMC show, went into full production in the fourth quarter of 2014, Bob McTernan, marketing and dealer operations manager, said Feb. 17 at the company's display booth.
“It’s proven very popular,” McTernan said. “We’ve had in excess of 3,000 units of production [and] more than doubled our daily output” as it transitioned from its previous tractor product.
