Why such a long road tractor?

I've seen several videos on You-Tube with super long road tractors and other than someone thinks it looks cool why would anyone want one this long?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hdi1RyBD4E&feature=related
Well, I guess you could also say it rides smoother but it's got to be almost impossible to maneuver.

some might have been concrete or dump trucks and some body maybe just put a 5th wheel on it. i seen on swamp loogers the have a green all wheel drive concrete truck that is real long also. it says concrete on the door.

A better question is WHY do you care/worry about a rig that makes someone else happy?

That being said, in the 80's a friend of mine bought a Marmon at a good price, had to go to the factory to get it (Wisconsin? Michigan?)

ANYHOW, it was a long wheelbase truck with no sleeper, and he had it for a number of years and apparently made good money pulling grocery "vans" with it.

It was a little silly looking but it payed the bills and I never criticized him over it. WHY are you?

It's mostly for looks. A big problem with that though is you can get fined for being over 70' long. Another drawback is you could never lease on to a big company with it if work got slow. A lot of them require the rig to be 260-270" max wheelbase.

Gesh dude, take a chill pill. I just wanted to know if I was missing something. Some reason why a long wheel base truck was desirable besides looks or I guess it might ride a bit smoother.

Marmon Motor Company, heavy duty truck manufacturer from 1963 to 1997 based in Garland, Tx

keep on trucking

(quoted from post at 22:22:14 08/05/11) I've seen several videos on You-Tube with super long road tractors and other than someone thinks it looks cool why would anyone want one this long?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hdi1RyBD4E&feature=related
Well, I guess you could also say it rides smoother but it's got to be almost impossible to maneuver.

Click to expand...

eople do what thay gotta do with what they have/can get. Every choice in life isn't always what we might like, but we have to choose anyway, even if the choices are limited.

It is mostly the owner thinks it looks cool that way. I think that they are ugly but each to their own. Very rarely they might need to have a longer wheel base to maximize the gross vehicle weight. Some of the guys here are needing to be a little longer to max out with tri-axle trailers and tractor combos. They can haul up to 96,000 lbs on all roads but the federal interstate ones.

yep a lot of them is cause the states make them do it, just like them trucks that used to be triaxles over in oHIo but now have axles from the back of the cab to the end of the bed. must be 5th or 6th axles.

Chris, Back before "Deregulation of the Trucking Industry" the max length of the total rig was a standard length so the shorter the tractor, the longer the trailer = more pay load!
But it came at a cost the super short cabover tractors were ruffer that 100 miles of the most washboard, rutted, pothole infested road you can dream up. Driver hated them! Caused physical problems. With TV shows like "Moveing On" where Kenworth truck corp showcased their longer Conventional trucks With their new Double bunk Sleeper, and Dual chrome stacks it blazed the way for truckers to start dreaming about what kind of truck they really wanted!
"BJ and the Bear", showed the Drivers what could be done when they expanded the short Cab-over with the K100 Areodyne. By this time the Cab-over days were numbered!
Length was all about comfort! When a driver can pull a 50 + ft trailer with a 300 in wheelbase tractor and have a extra large sleeper with all the comforts of home, why not?
There hasn't been a new Cab-over tractor built in 15+ yrs, practically nobody will drive one, the entire USA Trucking fleet is all Conventionals.
There isn't a Cab-over tractor pulling a Bull Wagon anywhere in America today!
Hope this helps.
Later,
John A.
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OBTW The Corn Binber below is not that long...maybe about 212 in wheel base.
That is based off of this,, if it had a 36 in sleeper and a 5th wheel over the center of the drivers there is barely enough room to turn the truck, and not hit the back of the sleeper with athe trailer.
Wheel base is measured from the center point between the drive axles to the center of the steering axle.
It is an optical illusion, making one think it is longer than it really is. No sleeper,and the jet engine is sticking out past the the rear axle about 4 feet.

The reason for the long wheelbase tractor is looks and ride.Has nothing to do with weight bridge,that's the distance between the drive axles and trailer axles.

In the mid 80's I drove a cabover Mack with a 320" wheelbase. The sleeper was so narrow that when laying on my back one shoulder touched the back of the sleeper and the other touched the back of the drivers seat. It was built to be used in the oil field but never made it there. Someone put a fifth wheel on it and I got to drive it over the road. It had to have a pogo stick to hold the airlines and light cord off the catwalk between cab and trailer. It was very, very rough riding, of course Mack's tended to be rough riding but really held togather good.

We had a rig that came in from the midwest on occasion hauling poultry meal. This was a conventional cab. There must have been at least 12' between the cab and the trailer and enough chrome and fancy paint to make a Cadillac blush. We always had to split weigh the rig on our 60' scale and he had trouble manuvering around our plant complex. It amazed me how much the frame twisted (and creaked and crackled) when he pulled out of the scalehouse and over the rail siding to go around to the bulk unloading bay.

If you drove one on mountain roads you would see why they are that long.

ok, I give, why? I've driven mountain roads that made my pickup feel way too big.

(quoted from post at 19:34:07 08/05/11) A better question is WHY do you care/worry about a rig that makes someone else happy?

That being said, in the 80's a friend of mine bought a Marmon at a good price, had to go to the factory to get it (Wisconsin? Michigan?)

ANYHOW, it was a long wheelbase truck with no sleeper, and he had it for a number of years and apparently made good money pulling grocery "vans" with it.

It was a little silly looking but it payed the bills and I never criticized him over it. WHY are you?

Click to expand...

Why the hell is your Q a better Q than OP's?