Paccar Unveils MX Engine After 10 Years, $1 Billion

This story appears in the Feb. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. — Paccar Inc. officials last week officially unveiled the company’s first-ever heavy-duty diesel engine in North America, an advanced version of the power plant its European-based subsidiary has been producing for several years.

Dubbed the MX, the engine has cost Paccar about $1 billion over 10 years to develop, said Mark Pigott, the company’s chairman and CEO.

Pigott, who led a daylong media tour of the company’s technical center here Feb. 4, said the engine was the result of “an amazing 25-year tour” that began when he was trying to sell trucks in Europe against DAF, the Netherlands-based truck and engine maker Paccar eventually acquired.

He said DAF’s superior engines were what helped attract him to buying the firm for Paccar, Bellevue, Wash. Paccar, which began as a railroad car maker, is now 106 years old.

Pigott said the MX, which already can be ordered by customers who purchase trucks from the company’s Peterbilt and Kenworth subsidiaries, will be put into trucks beginning this summer.

While the first engines are being produced at DAF’s facility in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Paccar’s new $400 million engine plant in Columbus, Miss., will begin finishing the DAF engines for use in North America this summer.

Pigott said the Mississippi plant would open with about 100 employees and be capable of finishing as many as 100 engines a day at first. Paccar built the Eindhoven plant in 2005.

Jim Cardillo, Paccar’s president, said the MX — which uses selective catalytic reduction to meet federal emissions requirements — already is running in 125,000 trucks DAF has sold since 2006.

He said the engine would meet 2010 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, and that the MX “has accumulated over 50 million test miles in rigorous and severe conditions in North America.”

“We’re very serious about the engine business,” Cardillo said, adding that all 674 Kenworth and Peterbilt dealers would have technicians trained to work on the MX by the time the trucks are rolling down the assembly line.

Paccar will offer its customers the choice of the MX or engines produced by independent engine maker Cummins Inc. He said Cummins, Columbus, Ind., also was a major component supplier for the MX. “They’re a great partner,” Cardillo said.

In the past, Paccar has offered engines from Cummins as well as from Caterpillar, which now has exited the on-highway engine business.

The MX is a 12.9-liter engine and will be available with between 380 horsepower and 485 hp, with torque outputs up to 1,750 foot-pounds.

The company will offer customers the choice of five different sizes of tanks to hold the diesel exhaust fluid necessary for the SCR emissions system to work. Trucks that make it back to their yards every day won’t need the large tanks over-the-road applications would require.

Craig Brewster, Paccar assistant vice president, said the MX would be “very competitively priced” and would cost less than competitors’ 15-liter engines, which he said the new engine would equal in performance.

The MX will be the standard engine in all Peterbilt and Kenworth Class 8 trucks, Brewster said.

Alan Treasure, Paccar marketing director, said 65% of customers for heavy-duty trucks in the United States require engines within the MX’s range.

He said the MX would prove superior to competing brands because of the company’s use of compacted graphite iron — which he said is stronger and lighter than regular iron — in the heads and engine blocks, as well as its use of encapsulated wire harnesses for the electrical system and use of fractured cap technology, which creates tighter seals between key component parts.

Treasure said Paccar expects that 90% of its MX engines will run at least 1 million miles before needing a major overhaul, compared with about 50% for competing brands.

Landon Sproull, chief engineer for Paccar’s Peterbilt Motors, said the use of CGI removed an additional 350 pounds from the MX, which he said already was a bit lighter than its competitors.

Aftermarket Director Kurt Freitag said the MX would come with a standard warranty of two years or 250,000 miles, which could be extended to as long as five years and as many as 500,000 miles under a premium warranty plan.

Ben Vander Griend, chief engineer on the engine project, said the MX would be available in six ratings, all of which can be achieved by software installations at dealer maintenance facilities. Each engine rating also will have three possible optimization choices: to maximize power, maximize fuel economy or a blend of both.

Vander Griend said the engine would have a 40,000-mile oil-drain standard for now, but he added that Paccar was looking to extend the time between oil changes.

Pigott said the MX was part of “a complete Paccar powertrain” the company eventually would produce and hinted that gear boxes and transmissions could be next.

He also said he was proud of Paccar’s “71 consecutive years of net profits.”

Pigott said that while truck sales remained weak in North America, the company was expecting business to get better based on forecasts of improvements in industrial production levels plus higher car sales and housing starts.