Class 6-7 Vehicles Help For-Hire Fleets Diversify, Save, Squeeze Into Metro Areas

Class 8 tractors have long been the standard for U.S. for-hire carriers, yet for certain service lines, even the most venerable of heavy-duty fleets are now buying Class 6 and 7 trucks and sometimes even smaller cargo vans.

Operational needs for the type of work to be done drive most of purchases, but the option to spec equipment carefully and do a job with a less costly piece of equipment than the usual heavy-duty rig also has appeal, fleet and manufacturing executives said in interviews.

Providers of expedited transportation and dedicated contract carriage are most likely to alter their purchases on the truckload side, whereas less-than-truckload carriers have long needed smaller vehicles for pickup and delivery work in metropolitan areas.

“Our primary choice is a Class 7 tractor with a 96-inch sleeper and a 22-foot box, but we also use some Class 8 vehicles. It’s all one piece — not articulated between the tractor and trailer — with 40 feet, bumper-to-bumper,” said Jeff Garra, manager of capacity development for Panther Expedited Services, Seville, Ohio.

Panther uses an all-owner-operator fleet and ranks No. 97 on the Transport Topics 100 list of for-hire carriers. Garra said Panther’s capacity comes from three roughly equal pools: conventional heavy-duty rigs, the specialized straight trucks and smaller cargo vans for loads of one ton or less. These are often Daimler Sprinter or Ford Econoline vans, he said.

“You can’t maneuver downtown with a normal linehaul trailer,” Stephen O’Kane, president of A. Duie Pyle Cos., West Chester, Pa., said on why his less-than-truckload carrier buys Class 7 tractors and Class 6 straight trucks for pickup-and-delivery work in Northeastern cities.

“We have some 20-foot straight trucks, but mainly we use 32-foot trailers with a single-axle Class 7 tractor, especially in Boston, Manhattan and center city Philadelphia,” said O’Kane, whose company ranks No. 80 on the for-hire TT 100.

Fleets are “spec’ing to the application” to save on weight, fuel and drivers, said Mark Lampert, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Daimler Trucks North America. Many are going to smaller sleeper cabs, smaller engines and even to Classes 6s and 7s, he added.

Fleets are “much more sensitive” to the applications for which the trucks are being used, meaning managers are generally not buying more truck than they really need, he said.

“We are selling multiple vehicle configurations” to more large fleets, Lampert said. Daimler and Navistar Inc. are large sellers in all aspects of Class 6-8 North American trucks, and they also make some sales in Classes 4 and 5 and below.

“As some of the larger, predominantly Class 8 fleets diversify their business by adding lower gross-vehicle-weight vehicles, to meet those needs we’re able to offer a complete product lineup with fully integrated, common platforms and the largest dealer support network in the industry,” said Jack Allen, president of Navistar’s North American Truck Group.

“Less-than-truckload carriers, especially, have metropolitan-area distribution needs. They are spec’ing a mix, depending upon the customer’s horsepower range,” said Erik Johnson, Kenworth Trucks’ on-highway marketing manager.

“An ‘expedited delivery’ spec’ might be a single-axle Kenworth T660 with sleeper straight truck. With careful spec’ing one can spec’ into the Class 7 range with a typical heavy-duty model,” Johnson said.

U.S. Xpress Enterprises, Chattanooga, Tenn., started as a longhaul truckload carrier in the early 1980s but is now trying to increase its Xpress Direct service of expedited delivery, to compete with companies such as Panther and the FedEx Custom Critical division.

Bob Poulos, vice president of sales and marketing for U.S. Xpress, said Xpress Direct has chartered DC-9 jets and helicopters for some deliveries but that trucks are the primary source of delivery capacity. Xpress Direct uses a formula similar to Panther’s: all owner-operators bringing about equal amounts of traditional rigs, modified straight trucks and cargo vans.

The U.S. Xpress owner-operators tend toward Class 8 vehicles for their modified straight trucks, Poulos said.

“These are much more nimble than our normal Class 8s, and they can get 10 miles per gallon,” he said. Carmakers are Xpress Direct’s best customers so far, Poulos said, with Volkswagen awarding its expedited contract for its Chattanooga plant to Xpress.

Panther’s Garra said an oddity of the current market is that Class 8s are being used somewhat more now because the generally poor sales in Class 7 have led to more limited availability of them.

The Class 7 specialty vehicles have risen sharply in price from about $70,000 to $90,000 in 2008, to $119,000 to $140,000 today, said Phil Ratcliff, Panther’s vice president of human resources. Oddly enough, Ratcliff said, that creates an incentive to spend even more.

“For an extra $10,000 on top of that, you can get a Class 8 vehicle and the engine lasts lots longer. You can also haul a wider variety of shipments, mainly heavier ones,” Ratcliff said.

In addition to the expedited work, Poulos said U.S. Xpress will buy smaller vehicles to serve its dedicated contract carriage customers.

Pyle and another LTL carrier, Wilson Trucking, Fishersville, Va., illustrate opposing approaches to a driver issue but agree on a matter with suppliers.

O’Kane said he uses the same brands for his linehaul and medium-duty vehicles.

“The technology is the same, there’s consistency in the components,” he said.

Wilson, which operates in 10 Southeastern states, went the other way, using Volvo Trucks for its linehaul tractors, maintenance director John Lane said, but other brands for lighter work.

Volvo makes Class 8s only but does have a sister company, UD Trucks, that makes Classes 4-7 vehicles. For Wilson’s Classes 6 and 7 needs, the carrier uses an assortment of Freightliners, Internationals and Kenworths. If Wilson were to start again from scratch, Lane said, he would recommend conformity among brands.

“There’s the issue of stocking parts and also getting information from the company on software and maintenance training,” Lane said.

The companies also agree on the desirability of liftgates, but they use drivers differently.

Lane’s Wilson colleague, David Collier, said all Wilson drivers have commercial driver licenses with hazardous materials endorsements. There are no Class 6-only drivers without CDLs, said Collier, who is vice president of sales and marketing.

Wilson mainly uses Class 6 straight trucks for its P&D operations in metropolitan areas such as Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta and Miami.

While LTL and truckload carriers have similar needs for linehaul equipment, on the P&D side, Collier said, “we’re more like the Post Office” in terms of operations.

At Pyle, O’Kane said he makes limited use of drivers without CDLs.

“We’ll take on a Class B driver if he agrees to go to school for a Class A CDL. It’s another entry point into the profession.”

The incentive to complete driver school is that Pyle pays its Class A CDL holders more money than the Class 6-only drivers, O’Kane said. His company also prefers Class 7 tractors to straight trucks but does use both.

O’Kane said Pyle’s 32-foot P&D trailers are supposed to be able to allow entry by a forklift. The trailer height is reduced to 12 or 12.5 feet from the normal 13.5 feet for a 53-foot linehaul trailer. The city vans also are narrower, at 96 inches, compared with 102 inches for linehaul equipment, he said.