Sterling has harmonized the full range of its product offerings this year, according to Roberta Hill, district sales manager for Sterling Truck Corporation, a subsidiary of Freightliner LLC. "Sterling is a new company bringing fresh ideas to the trucking industry." Hill spoke during the Sterling Truck chassis seminar at the NTEA Truck Product Conference in Dearborn, Michigan, September 18-20.
"Sterling's mission is to be the dominant manufacturer of vocationally oriented Class 6-8 trucks in North America and a major manufacturer of over the road trucks," said Hill. "We will do that by offering truck operators a level of product technology and customer support previously unavailable to vocational buyers."
Sterling is strengthening its vocational truck sales throughout North America, Hill said. "This year Sterling entered the Mexican market with our product and is increasing its position in Australia and New Zealand."
Target vocations for the Sterling product include construction applications, heavy-haul line tractors, tankers, refrigerated and dry van straight trucks, daycab tractors, refuse, fire and rescue operations, snowplow, municipal service, and utility applications, according to Hill.
"Sterling is going to offer the right truck for the job by increasing the factory options available to help body builders have a chassis that fits their needs," said Hill. "Vocational trucks frequently have specific requirements based on the job they must perform. Concrete readymix trucks operate in a completely different environment than furniture delivery trucks. Because of this, Sterling's engineering teams have developed the right combination of chassis configurations and component options that will help the operators gain the optimum efficiency and productivity they desire.
"Our St Thomas, Ontario, facility has been expanded this past year at a capital investment in excess of $40 million. We greatly increased the workforce at the St Thomas plant," Hill said. "We are producing more units at the St Thomas plant than at any other time in our history."
Sterling has strengthened the company's executive management by the addition of John Nelligan as General Manager of Sales in Canada for Sterling, Hill said. "Canada is a very important market for Sterling, and our diversified product offerings, as well as our executive leadership in that area, will be a vital tool for the body builders who service the Canadian marketplace.
"Some of the tools that Sterling introduced this past year have been welcomed by the body building community and the truck operators," Hill said. "These products are designed to assist the body builders and truck operators by providing the right chassis configuration to do the required job."
Demand for the Sterling product in a tandem configuration has been recognized by Sterling, said Hill. Sterling is planning to mate the tandem Acterra with some of the higher horsepower engines that offer a full line of power options. Hill said that demand has originated from the body building community.
The tandem Acterra has a 106" bumper-to-back-of-cab measurement that fits well with in-city vocational applications.
The Class 8 tandem product continues to be designed for heavy vocational applications. "Sterling is designing L and LT products at the heavy construction business and linehaul applications," said Hill.
Sterling's TufTrac suspension for on/off road applications can be combined with different frame options, and factory-blanked auxiliary axle options will put Sterling's chassis into a leading position in the vocational arena, Hill said.
TufTrac comes in a 40,000- through 46,000-lb tandem configuration aimed at the mixer, dump, refuse, and construction vocations. It has a six-rod design combined with taper-leaf springs that are suitable for on/off or off-highway applications. "The design idea behind TufTrac was to provide a highly articulating suspension with excellent load equalization qualities," said Hill. Sterling continues to expand the nonproprietary rear suspension offerings by incorporating more models of the Hendrickson and Neway suspension products.
The Sterling Equiflow system equalizes the fuel flow between two side-mounted tanks without the need for underslung crossover lines. "Equiflow continues to make ground clearance a little less of an issue," said Hill. Sterling sees this system as important to the mixer and dump builders that do not want crossover lines to interfere with ground clearance.
"Seating configurations and materials will make the Sterling product more adaptable to the vocational user's needs," said Hill. Configurations such as two-man seating are available for the Acterra product line. Also introduced are new seat coverings that will provide vocational users an industrially oriented material that should outwear many of the previous material offerings, Hill said. The new seat covering is a bulletproof ballistic fabric.
Engineering Can Custom Design "We hope that many of you in the body building community have been using Sterling's engineering assistance to build custom chassis for your applications," said Hill. The body building community will see Custom Application Engineering (CAE) group focusing on the vocational needs. CAE can take build-out requests and integrate them into the vehicle design. CAE is the group that engineers the chassis with all the specialized equipment that a body builder would like to see on that chassis. Body builders can contact CAE through the field sales manager at the Sterling factory.
The incorporated items are run as a line-ticket item at Sterling's truck plant in St Thomas, Ontario, and the truck is then built online. The build-out requests can be integrated in one unit or several units. More body builders are requesting special modifications on single or fewer chassis than in past practice, said Hill.
Examples of how CAE will engineer items include prepping the frame for a pusher axle, punching extra holes in the frame, building the chassis with a clear frame, bolted construction instead of Huck fasteners, various frame reinforcements, and custom upfitters electrical connector locations.
"Sterling can perform extensive chassis modifications in our St Thomas plant," said Hill. "But Sterling has been able to do that this entire past year. We want body builders to understand that we can work with them to build the right chassis for the job and help them to provide the best product possible for their customer," said Hill.