After a hiatus of no less than seven years, the third edition of the magnificent classic truck show in Stroe (the Netherlands) was held on July 1. More than 300 vehicles, mostly large ones, were parked in the very same field as in 2016.
Due to the rain showers, I concentrated on taking pictures of the specialties when it was dry. Some obscure brands are also included in today’s tour.
Let’s start with a specialty right away! A French -needless to say- 1971 Unic T10S/6 ‘Vercors’ tractor. Colossus Fiat was already the full owner of Unic when everything was integrated in the newly formed Iveco company in the mid-seventies.
1967 Mercedes-Benz LA 1113 dump truck.
1958 Mercedes-Benz LP 333 ‘centipede’ flatbed truck. This truck model was only offered from 1958 to 1961, when three axles were required for a 16 tonnes GVWR in Germany. This specific drivetrain configuration is also known as a Chinese Six. Completely extinct now, in Europe anyway.
1962 Mack C600 truck, originally a tractor unit, with a 1989 Floor trailer.
Arrive at any campsite and surprise everybody.
What a beast, this Cummins powered, 1979 Autocar DC10364B 6×4 tractor.
1985 MAN 19.321 FLS 4×2 tractor.
Prior to MAN, there was M.A.N. Diesel. What we have here is a second gen, so called Ponton Kurzhauber in the form of a 1977 13.168 4×4 truck.
Ask an eight-year-old child to draw a big truck and something like this will be the end result. Which doesn’t make the 1964 M.A.N. Diesel 10.212.F less impressive.
Now when was the last time you saw a Hogra truck? Here’s a carefully and beautifully restored 1956 Hogra H7.
Truck manufacturer Hogra (Van Hoek – Gravelaar) from the Netherlands made a few hundred vehicles in the fifties, only a handful of them has survived. They were powered by a six-cylinder Perkins or a more powerful, four-cylinder Steyr diesel engine.
Made in former East Germany, an IFA-Horch H3A from the fifties.
1970 Magirus-Deutz Jupiter, powered by an air-cooled, 12.7 liter V8. Another motorhome in disguise.
1974 Ford D 0910 Custom flatbed truck. A mighty fine example of the renowned 1965-1981 Ford D-series from the UK.
The D-Series was superseded by the Cargo, above a 1984 Ford Cargo 0913.
1996 Mercedes-Benz MB 100D flatbed truck. Spanish-built, front-wheel-drive.
1996 Scania 143m V8 Streamline 4×2 tractor with a 2002 Welgro dry bulk semi-trailer for transporting chicken feed, evidently.
1995 DAF FT 95.500 Super Space Cab, powered by a Cummins N14 engine. With a maximum power output of 507 DIN-hp, these were the first-ever DAF tractors that went beyond the 500 hp mark.
On a related note, DAF recently unveiled a 660 hp cabover for the Australian market. Guess what’s purring underneath its cab, now with 15 liter displacement.
Update December 2023: Dyers Distribution is the first haulage company in Australia with a DAF XG+ 660 in their fleet, this 6×4 tractor prime mover (photo courtesy of BIGtruck online magazine).
1985 DAF NTT 2800 6×4 tractor. Look at those drive axles and frame rails, this thing means business!
This was DAF’s last series of conventionals, they were aimed at the harsh African market. The cabs were sourced from Magirus-Deutz (already part of Iveco when the NTT/NAT 2800 was introduced).
1957 Bedford TD-series box truck.
DAF FT 3300 ATI (advanced turbo intercooling) Space Cab, introduced in the mid-eighties.
1981 Scania LBS 141 V8 6×2 box truck with a matching Groenewegen trailer.
1977 Peugeot 404 diesel pickup. The food and beverage services can be seen in the background.
More recent and brand new vehicles were also shown, like a 2023 Volvo FM Electric 4×2 tractor. It’s rated at a GCVW of 44 tonnes (97,000 lbs), nothing to complain about.
2008 MAN TGX 18.680 (powered by a 16.2 liter V8 for sure) with a Pacton semi-trailer/curtainsider from the same year.
Anyone interested in a (non) truck-mounted forklift?
And here are the European members of the Traton Group. From left to right: a MAN TGE 3.180 panel van (rebadged VW Crafter), a MAN TGX 18.470 and a Scania 460S, both are 4×2 tractors.
Super refers to the newly developed 12.7 liter inline-six turbodiesel, a power unit that will be used across the whole Traton board soon enough, so Navistar included.
Navistar was previously known as International. The Verweij trucking family put their 1977 International Loadstar 1750 wrecker on display, among many others.
Superb, this 1968 DAF ‘Torpedo’ A13DA413 flatbed truck.
1972 DAF bus chassis with a Belgian Jonckheere body. And that’s the typical Dutch public transport color scheme of yore alright.
A Jumbo livestock semi-trailer, coupled to a 2001 Volvo NH12 tractor.
1983 DAF FA 1600 DT360 flatbed truck with a load of milk cans. Not quite period-correct, as the days of milk cans were already long gone by the early eighties.
1982 FTF FS-8.8.20D 8×4 heavy-haulage tractor, powered by a Detroit Demon Diesel 8V92T two-stroke engine. Keep on screaming!
A pair of Steyr drive axles with hub reduction. The quality is high, the duty is heavy. FTF started to use Steyr axles in the early eighties, these turned out to be more dependable than similar Kirkstall products.
1973 DAF FT 2605 DKA360 tractor and a Floor single-axle semi-trailer with a Kennis rolloader crane.
1975 Volvo N1020 6×2 tractor. The N10 conventional with square lines replaced the rounded N88.
The tour’s final showpiece is a Perkins-powered, 1974 Volvo F83S.
The next Stroe exhibition will probably and hopefully be held in July 2028. Looking back, that’s sooner than you think.
Very nice! The Mack C series is particularly interesting. Those short (for the U.S. anyway) conventionals were only made for a few years, and were among the first Macks to feature the new Mack V-8 diesel. The C series was ultimately replaced by the U series around 1965.
There are plenty of classic and more recent Macks around here, but this is the only C600 I know of. Imported as a tractor 10 years ago, now registered as a motorhome (which it obviously is).
Have a look here, the website of Martin Monné (one can say the European Mr. Mack), who also worked on that C600.
http://www.mackmonne.nl/
Wow! What a cornucopia of fab old trucks. I don’t know where to begin. As Bob said, that Mack C600 is a rare bird. I love the MB “Centipede”, not only because of the unusual axle arrangement but for its styling, which was from my early childhood days.
I need to run right now after a quick look, but will spend more time with these at lunch. Thanks for putting this together.
That generation of heavy Mercedes LP cabovers has such a sad expression, must be because of its grille/headlamps-unit.
They have become rare, though I caught another splendid LP 333 just eight days after this show.
I understand why it’s seen as sad, but I didn’t see that at the time, as that look was fairly common at the time.
Nice show, Ive driven a few D series Ford trucks they came in various sizes and powertrains, The D Bedford is familiar where my dad worked there was a wrecker built on the back of one it never got used after they close the panel shop and eventually became a flat deck to haul tractors when Massey Fergusons outgrew the 42 Fargo,
A Chinese six configuration is single dual single, not single single dual that is a six wheeler, a wheel is either single or twin tyred
Maybe there’s another Chinese Six configuration down under (who knows?), but it’s a truck/tractor/bus-chassis with two steering axles at the front and one axle at the rear (which is the drive axle, naturally).
Just do a google-image-search for “chinese six truck”.
Yeah, we called them ‘Chinese Sixes’ in the UK. All back-to-front, see?
We had some daft legislation too – though nothing compares to the German’s short-lived Seebohm-era. Cripple your haulage industry to favour the railways…what could possibly go wrong?
What a treat for a Friday evening!
“Now when was the last time you saw a Hogra truck?” Actually, never, but I’m glad I now have.
That DAF bus reminds of a family holiday in the Netherlands in 1970 – maybe not exactly the same but the same idea, and certainly yellow.
I’d be very interested to find out more about the electric Volvo – that might be the rest of Friday evening gone.
Truth is, I never saw a Hogra truck before either…
Multiple manufacturers and independent specialists offer heavy, electric trucks and tractors these days; heavy as in up to 50,000 kg/110,000 lbs gross (combined) vehicle weight.
Like this 49,000 kg, electric 10×2 dump truck (Mercedes-Benz based):
https://veldhuizen.nl/verhuur/49t-asfalt-kipper-electric/
Thanks, Johannes! Party time for Old Tom, the truck salesman.
Great photos and commentary Johannes – and thank you for including the bus…
Thanks Jim. Just like last time, there was only one bus. I’m still hoping for a similar show (or smaller) specifically for classic buses and coaches. There are several bus museums, but that’s just not the same as seeing a wide variety of many vehicles out in the open, with plenty of space and light to take good pictures.
Thanks for sharing these. I’m a little surprised at the large number of US trucks, and how much like the US market trucks the modern Volvo N12 is. I admit to feeling old when I see a Ford Cargo is a classic truck, but I felt the same about the E30 BMW at the car show last year.
The Volvo F83S in the final shot is very surprising to me, the styling looks very Asian like 70s Japanese and Chinese trucks.
E30s seem to have crawled out the woodwork round here, recently. Useable classics. They make me think we got lost on the way…
The Volvo F83 Snabbe/Trygge is quite an interesting story. Originally had Volvo’s own 3.6 V8 petrol, which was a bit thirsty. They left it in low-volume production forever, since Volvo decided to concentrate on heavies instead. It was eventually replaced by the F4, a slightly overweight Club-of-Four which also wasn’t that popular.
The original version of these light cabover Volvos dates back to 1956. The rectangular plastic grille arrived in 1972.
What Nick says, designing and building light trucks is just not Volvo’s thing. The same applies even more to Scania.
These Space Cabs are even more 80s than a Ferrari Testarossa.
This is one smooth rig. Looks like it just rolled off a movie set and into this show.
Nailed it!!
You’ve mentioned ‘movie set’. So I just did a bit of searching, looking for Rutger Hauer’s (R.I.P.) semi-motorhome he used in the US. I found it alright, see below, it dates back to the early eighties. It turned out that the semi-trailer I caught at the show last summer was his.
Well that’s cleared up then!
What a great CC connection. Blade Runner has always been my favorite 80s sci-fi movie and is what first came to mind. Cool to find out Rutger’s trailer made it back to his homeland.
Hauer in his younger years, the late sixties. Director Paul Verhoeven -the name must sound familiar- worked a lot with Hauer in their Dutch years.