Paccars and colour schemes

With so many trucks delivered in factory white these days, it is a pleasure to see trucks carrying custom or company paint schemes. Paccar's Peterbilts and Kenworths tend to be built to order, and special paint jobs go with the territory. Some recent examples.

 Well painted KW is enjoying a second career hauling excavators. (New Minas, NS.)

 British racing green and white makes a slick look for this Pete, especially with some gold trim.. (Woodstock, NB)

Bigfreight from Steinbach, MB has landed in Atlantic Canada recently with their standout swoops. (Woodstock, NB)

 Single colour KWs at the dealer in Dieppe, NB, look uninteresting...

next to one with some nice detailing, particularly with the classic long hood variant.

Pete low cab forward fueler at the Colbrook, NS delaer is likely destined for CFB Greenwood. Note it is carrying Tremcar mudflaps.
According to the Tremcar website, they are building 26 of these fuelers for the Department of National Defence. The trucks are assembled at their London, ON plant. http://www.tremcar.com/en/

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PACCAR - all shapes, all sizes

Pacific Car and Foundry (PACCAR) the parent  company of Kenworth and Peterbilt is well represented on the roads these days, and is expanding its range of vehicles down in to smaller sizes, in addition to providing many models in larger sized trucks.

1. This little KW is fitted with a Swenson spreader for the winter, but will likely be fitted with a dump body for the summer. It also appears to have brine or other anti-freezing liquid additive.

 2. G.A.Foss Transport of Vaughan, ON distributes petroleum products and is part of the Seaboard Harmac group of companies.

3. They have a fleet of identical spec KWs, all leased from PACCAR's leasing operation Paclease.

4. The local Peterbilt dealer has four of these big Pete 6x6s waiting delivery to the Dexter/Municipal Construction group. Built on traditional lines they have headlights mounted in the bumper to keep them closer to the ground. Compared to a recent vintage highway tractor their overall height is no greater, but there is a lot more ground clearance.

Leyland DAF - a blast from the past

The once proud Leyland Truck name has all but vanished from the world, and it has been many moons since Leyland gave up on the Canadian market in the 1950s . However the name does live on in a very small way.

In 1987 Leyland Trucks Division of the Rover Group merged with DAF Trucks of Holland trading as Leyland DAF in the UK, but still DAF elsewhere. Unfortunately that merger flopped and was declared insolvent, and the two companies spun back off through management buyouts.

In 1996 Paccar Inc (parent of Kenworth and Peterbilt) bought DAF and continued to produce DAF trucks in Eindhoven, Netherlands. In 1998 Paccar bought Leyland, to produce DAF trucks in their Leyland, UK plant. They have since expanded to Brazil, with operations in Belgium.

The Leyland name was obliterated from trucks, except for British military vehicles.

And so the two brand new Leyland DAFs that arrived in Halifax by ship last week must be British military. As the second one left the terminal this morning I was able to identify the body as a glycol recovery unit, manufactured by Beam A/S of Denmark.

No idea what powers the truck (likely a Cummins) and the Beam unit is separately powered, usually with a Mercedes package.  

The truck is right hand drive and is apparently destined for a British military airfield in Canada, just in time for winter. But where would such a base be? The RAF does not acknowledge any base in Canada, but does participate in a NATO training plan, but that is run jointly by the Canadian military and Bombardier. The British Army has a large establishment at CFB Suffield in Alberta, but has no fixed wing aircraft there.
So this is a Truckspotters Alert to keep an eye open for these two units. Today's track was being hauled by Clarke.

No Dinky Toy

Used to be the only hope of seeing a Foden in Canada was to buy one of the excellent diecast Dinky Toys made by Meccano Ltd. Not so now.

Schlumberger, the world wide drilling services company, has a fleet of wireline and data logging Fodens. These trucks are fitted with electrical wires which are lowered in to wells to measure, record and then transmit data (by satellite.) The Schlumberger brothers invented wireline data collection in 1927 and have developed it to the curent state of the art.

For pure Foden fans, I should acknowledge that as with some North American truck brands the name can be misleading (OK I will only mention Autocar in passing.)

Foden, the venerable British truck manufacturer from Sandbach, Cheshire, fell on hard times in the 1970s and despite government bailouts went into receivership in 1980 and was snapped up by the deep pocketed PACCAR (Pacific Car and Foundry) the makers of Kenworth and Peterbilt.

PACCAR then proceeded to buy DAF in the Netherlands in 1996, then Leyland trucks in the UK in 1998.

Shortly thereafter the Leyland factory started to produce DAFs that were badged as Foden, and independent Foden production ceased. By 2006 the sham was given up and the Foden name was retired. Nothing against DAFs, they are fine trucks I am sure, but the Foden history was just not enough to justify a free standing brand, and now PACCAR produces only DAFs in the UK.

The Schlumberger truck pictured is interesting though, because it not only has a DAF cab, with Foden badge, but also carries Kenworth on its doors. These particular trucks are often shipped all over the work to work where needed, and so perhaps the Kenworth name is more recognizable in the oil fields.

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