Freightliner and MB motors??

[jharvey]

Anybody here got any opinions on the Freightliner medium duty rigs with the Mercedes Benz motors?

How difficult/expensive are they to maintain and work on?

Any thoughts?

John

 

[Duke]

All I can tell you is what I hear on the street: Freightliner is on the below average side of quality compared to other brands.

M/B diesels are nice, but I gotta think they're expensive to work on compared to IH or Cummins or Detroit. Probably a lot like CAT.

My gut feeling would be that it would be fine as a new truck under warranty, but once it expires, it could be expensive to repair & maintain.

A company I buy lumber from stopped buying IH and went to Freighties. They don't like any of them and are now buying IH again.

Another yard I do business with has 2 of them, both less than 4 years old, they look really bad already. Kind of like they're falling apart.

I sat in the cab of their tandem and thought it was very nice inside. I also think they're good looking trucks.

 

[Truckie]

I know the older M/B motors are good, the ones that are in the Lebehrs, on the heavy equipment. I cant comment on the newer ones as I have not worked on them and have not heard any gossip on them.

 

[jharvey]

Thanks for the input gang...keep it coming

 

[Brickman]

From what I hear on the street, not good.


Once heard of a $1800 alternator that took most of a week to get shipped into where this dudes truck was down. MB parts are high from what I hear.

 

[PackRat]

I haven't heard a thing about the M/D M/B's, but I've heard plenty bad about the ones in Class 8 rigs. Heard of at least 2, that came apart, somewhat violently.

 

[ndurbin]

I've wrenched on a few. Their not any worse than anything else I've worked on as far as ease of maintence goes. The trucking company I usto work for has about a dozen of the 500 hp models in some Freightliner Class 8s running around. I never heard any complaints about them from the drivers. Is fun to get into the DDEC system to see what the drivers have been upto tho.

Nathan