CC Global: 2006 Iveco Trakker 440 6×6 – Versatile Heavy Duty Truck

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Iveco (Industrial Vehicles Corporation), nowadays a CNH Industrial Company, was founded in 1975. It was a major merger between Fiat’s truck division and the truckmakers OM from Italy, Unic from France and Magirus-Deutz from Germany. Initially Fiat owned 80% of the Iveco shares, in 1980 that percentage increased to the full 100%.

Since 2002 Iveco’s line-up of heavy duty construction and off-road trucks is called the Trakker, it superseded the EuroTrakker. Mainly through Magirus-Deutz the Iveco company got a fabulous expertise in building heavy duty off-road vehicles.

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The maximum axle load of each rear axle is 9,500 kg. Add the 9,000 kg of the front axle and you get a 28,000 kg (61,700 lbs) GVWR for this 6×6 dump truck. Heavy duty 4×4, 6×6, 8×8 and 10×8 trucks are very common around here.

They’re all cabovers these days, but I vividly remember the conventional 6×6 dump trucks from my childhood in the (early) seventies. The conventionals I saw on our roads back then were built by Ginaf, Terberg, Mercedes-Benz, MAN, Hanomag-Henschel, Magirus-Deutz and Tatra.

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The Iveco is also equipped with a PTO-driven crane. Trucks like this have a hard life, not only due to the nature of their full-time daily job, but also because these are used during the winter season for salt spreading and snow plowing.

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The crane is mounted on the truck’s frame, right inbetween the tilt cab and dump bed.

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The rear side of the chassis, with a drawbar coupling. Typically this kind of on-/off-road trucks tows a lowbed trailer to transport construction machinery. In that case the legal maximum GVWR of the whole combination is 50,000 kg, which explains the 400+ hp engines in these short distance cabover trucks with their day cabs.

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The cab is related to the Iveco Stralis long distance trucks and tractors, the Trakkers have a steel bumper though. This Trakker is powered by an Iveco 13 liter 6-cylinder diesel engine, good for 440 hp. Note the super singles on the front axle.