This year, the Scania V8 turbodiesel is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The current generation, with a displacement of 16.4 liter, is offered in four maximum power output versions: 520, 580, 650 and 730 DIN-hp. Geurtsen’s black brute is a fine example of the latest breed of griffins that hammers down our streets.
The Scania is equipped with a Hyva hook lift system to put open top containers on and off the truck and the trailer. Or you can just open the doors and dump the load.
From left to right: the steering and liftable pusher axle with super singles, the drive axle and the liftable tag axle, both with dual wheels.
The 10 tons front axle also has super singles. They don’t stick out past the cab’s fenders, as these heavy-duty front axles are a bit shorter than the regular/lighter axles.
This is how it looks when the pusher and tag axle are up, now it has the turning circle of a comparable 4×2 truck.
Hooked up to the Scania, a 2002 GS Meppel drawbar trailer. Super singles all around, the second axle is liftable.
Only behind the hedge I could capture the whole combination in one picture. The legal maximum GVM of the truck is 37 metric tons, whereas the trailer is rated at 27 tons GVM; that’s a grand total of 64 tons. The issue at hand is the Dutch weight limit of 50 tons. Well, I’m sure the guys find a way to work around it, anyway, anyhow.
Here’s a 2008 video of a Geurtsen Scania V8, featuring an R 500, the previous generation of the truck maker’s top model. It seems to tow the same trailer as shown in the article, or at least an identical one. To quote Men At Work: “Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover”.
Fascinating. Thanks This one must be new or at least nearly new given it’s pristine condition.
I am especially impressed with all the engineering and technical talent, research and development efforts, etc. that it takes to design and build such a rig. I understand that this is an evolution many previous models but still the effort to design a new model is enormous.
That’s quite a menacing-looking rig. This reminds me to do some research the relationship between SAAB and Scania.
Though I have no frame of reference with which to comment on this truck, I enjoyed this post.
Thanks. The SAAB-Scania relationship in short: it was one company from 1969 to 1995.
Below a current Scania dash. It would fit nicely in a very big new SAAB, sort of.
Nice looking units, dont like 6 wheel trailers they are a menace to reverse they go real wrong real quick but tow ok, what does it cart container doors on a tipper would be a pain.
“Autonomous” drawbar trailers with 2 or 3 axles are still widely used here. Those are trailers that can stand on their own wheels without support, unlike any mid-axle trailer. And tongue weight is never an issue with such trailers.
Open top containers always have rear cargo doors for tipping the freight. The rig in the video hauls rocks/cobblestones/paving bricks, according to the guy who posted it on the tube channel.
…and this is how to reverse an autonomous drawbar trailer in one flowing movement…
As always with these posts, I closely scrutinise the lamps and reflectors. One thing I’m finding consistently interesting is the presence of front identification lamps on nearly/all of these tractors. That’s the group of three lights centred above the windshield. They’re required—amber front, red rear—on the US+Canada regulatory island, but they’re not specified in the UN Regulations most of the rest of the world uses, including Europe where they originated.
What makes the presence of identification lamps on Dutch trucks interesting is that unlike the North American regs wherein anything not specifically prohibited is allowed (as long as it doesn’t impair the effectiveness of any required item), in the UN regs anything not specifically allowed is prohibited, and that has tended to be pretty rigidly adhered to. Before the Euro/UN regs had provisions for central brake lights or side marker lights and reflectors on passenger cars, for example, exports from America had to have those lights permanently disabled (wires cut and lenses blacked out).
The lack of specifications for identification lamps in the UN regs has been spotted as an area of vehicle lighting not yet harmonised between the American island and the rest of the world; it’s discussed right out in backletter text in this relevant SAE document. The American identification lamp specs wouldn’t be acceptable as-are because they specify amber for the front ones, and the UN regs require white light from all forward-facing lights and reflectors (except fog lamps can be yellow).
So…this is maybe allowed by Dutch national regulations, despite the variance from the UN regs? Perhaps. But that kind of departure isn’t very common any more. There used to be a bunch of them—France’s yellow-headlamp requirement, Sweden’s headlamp wiper requirement (pressure jets alone wouldn’t meet it), the UK’s dim-dip requirement, Germany’s single-side parking light function—but those and more all went away in a deliberate sweep in the late ’80s-early ’90s. Norway and Sweden and possibly Denmark and Finland used to allow US-style identification lamps as long as the front ones were white, but they set up cutoff dates after which all newly-registered vehicles have to comply strictly with the UN regs, which means no more identification lamps.
(Alright, so *I* find these kinds of minutiæ interesting…)
You, sir, are a professor of lamps and reflectors. And that is one stout, bad ass rig
There are no amber lights on the front of the truck though.
The three above the windshield, visible in the fourth photo, might make white light, but it’s pretty good odds they light up amber.