It occurred to me today...why are articulated lorry cabs so big?
I know they often have to have a sleeping compartment, but surely they could be made a lot lower and smaller, therefore reducing build cost and weight etc. The weight issue would allow greater payloads.
As no lorry firm to my knowledge has ever made small cab version and this idea is so simple it must be fatally flawed somewhere.
Any ideas?
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more to the point
why do these LARGE vehicles have such SMALL lights?????
look at a cars light,,they light up like a christmas tree,,,,look at a van or lorry,,,diddy little things
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Driver comfort. (He's in there as much as you are in your office... if not more)
Height - so he can see better.
Also, the sheer size of the cab acts as the battering ram into the air - as opposed to the articulated section, which is normally slab faced, but unpowered.
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Is it down to the aerodynamics too? The trailer is going to be a huge box, so you might as well have a tractor unit which is the same size but a bit more slippery to the wind.
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market forces, artics are quite different in different parts of the world
the public gets what the public wants.
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Basically its for driver comfort. Imagine you are a driver and you leave your base on a monday morning and are stopping out until friday. You need to take a fair amount of gear with you including clothing, television, small fridge etc. The last thing you want to do is pile it all on your bunk and everytime you stop for a break/night's sleep have to move it all around the cab. So having a large cab is a big factor with drivers who night-out a lot.
Have a look at some of the 'urban artics' such as brewery drays. They have tiny cabs and small trailers because getting into pubs and tight places is made so much easier. Plus they don't ever night-out and don't require storage space in the cab.
I think you will also find that upcoming legislation will soon require companies that have drivers nighting-out to provide trucks with 'walk through' cabs and sufficient height to stand up inside the cab. I don't fully understand why, but presumably something to do with health and safety.
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You may notice with supermarket lorries (tesco, sainsburys etc..) have a back window on their cab,, this is to allow the driver to see when reversing into tight spaces at a store as some arnt very big to turn round like a supermarket in High Wycombe!! You try reversing a 13.5m artic in to a building blinside without a back window!! Experienced drivers have no trouble.
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Its not what you drive, its how you drive it! :-)
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"'walk through' cabs and sufficient height to stand up inside the cab. I don't fully understand why, but presumably something to do with health and safety."
If you have ever tried getting from the driver's seat to the sleeper bunk of older style cabs you would quickly understand why!. From a seated position in your computer chair, imagine lifting yourself up onto the the arm of the chair, then shuffling back a couple feet, then onto a mattress, and thats the easy bit. A feet-first forward shuffle to get back to the driver seat is alot harder than it sounds.
In the US almost all the major truck fleets have gone to conventional cabs (engine under bonnet in front of cab) and have pretty much abandonned the cab-over style (flat front, engine under cab, the type you see here in UK). The only reason for this change is driver preference and comfort, as cab-over designs are more beneficial to the fleet operator due to higher axle weight limits.
I don't see the health and safety angle (though I imagine a fair few backs have been put out and shins bruised), but from a driver standpoint, the comfort and convienience goes a long way.
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Forgot to reply to the original post:
The reason why cabs are so big, have you ever seen the size of a typical artic diesel engine?. The cab has to fit over that, and the front wheels, then the driver needs enough room to operate safely.
In all seriousness, find a pic of a "big" artic cab and try to see how you could make it smaller.
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I response to the indicator light comment, I agree, they are too small. Some trailers have two or three banks of indicators which are a lot better. But you still have older trailers with small round indicators on which when dirty or in bad visibility or bright sunlight are virtually invisible.
When I'm pulling one of these older trailers you can have the indicator on for some time and you know the car approaching hasn't seen until the last moment when they panic and swerve into the fast lane although this is sometimes due to inatention, but we're all guilty of that from time to time.
I don't know why they don't legislate to force manufacturers to supply three banks of indicators. You'd have to be blind to miss them.
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AFAIK the reason we have cab-overs here is that we have maximum lenghts that they do not have in the US or Australia. The maximisation of load means the cab has to be over the engine. Without the limit tractor units can be longer hence some of the huge cabs on US trucks which would be over length in the UK.
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Agree, in Oz the cabs are much bigger even without the roo/sheep/cow catcher on the front.
StarGazer
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OK, here are some examples of artic cabs towing road trains:
www.andybell.ch/oc_main.php?page=8&lang=1
One of these has 4 tanker trailers
www.pbase.com/image/35577797
Only two trailers, but scale the size of the cab from the crash barrier compared to the following ute.
www.abcproject.com/pictures/pages/roadtrain.html
Cant quite make this one out, 3 or 4 tanker trailers.
StarGazer
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and here are some examples of cabovers with a difference! I think these are rolling hotels. Or something. Lights are small, but scroll down.
wildcolonial
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Looks like Mad Max on Acid.
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and we think a couple of blue led's are bad...cheers...keo.
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