This was a bit ahead of the times. I’ve seen what amount to trailer mounted behind the cab of some trucks from time to time, but back when length regulations were more restrictive, one had to be more creative. If you’re going to be a husband-wife driving team, better to bring as many comforts of home along.
I wondered if these were actually made; sure enough, I found several on the web including a description by the relative of one that owned one:
Here’s one being shown at a truck show. ‘
And a happy co-owner, this one mounted on an International.
Another GMC.
Here’s what someone wrote up about his uncle’s:
My uncle owned one. I believe it was one of 20 ever built. It had everything described and the artists drawings are 100% accurate. The table/seats where the woman is sitting was removable. The post came apart stuck into a hole in the floor carpet and in the bottom of the table. Looking at the pic on the right (her left) was the crawl thru to the cab. The bathroom/shower was on the drivers side rear with a small sliding window/screen. It had a sink and a hot plate built into the counter. A microwave built into the wall to the left of the sink and I think the fridge was under it. It had an Onan gas generator with the control panel to start and monitor it on the wall behind where the woman is sitting and a separate stereo/cassette next to it for the sleeper. His was behind an International day cab cabover (very similar in color a little different stripe design) it had a 400 CAT 13 spd 3.55 rears. He bought it used in 1982 I think.. not many miles on it original owner sold because he found out he was terminal with a short time to live. I think he bid on it and won. He got pulled over by cops once because they wanted to see inside it. He was always being asked “can we look inside” by everyone. He crashed it in 1984 (rolled it on it’s side) and put the motor, trans, rears into a glider kit. He got the 1985 first year redesigned International conventional they went from a big square hood to just about what they have today.
Dang, that is sweet!
A whole lot nicer than the typical overnight riding accommodations on those rigs. Everything needed to be in miniature except the bed. Small holding tanks. Very cool!
Very neat – I can see these being appealing (in theory, at least) to husband/wife driving teams.
I’d love to see a picture of one with the cab tilted for engine access. That’s a whole lot of extra stuff attached to the cab (and I guess the driver has a lot of living space to search through to make sure nothing would go flying when tilted).
I wondered the same thing, but I’m sure access was similar to the extra large tilt cabs on late model fire trucks.
That’s a good point. Those huge fire trucks have some kind of hydraulic assist for the cab tilt – I wonder if such a thing was available in 1979?
Interesting, we designed a similar, but more compact design for IH at Coachmen Ind. at the same time. AFAIK only 1 unit was completed. Unfortunately I never managed to get any photos of the finished unit, but do have several pics of design sketches I did as the Manager of Design for Coachmen at the time. It was a interesting project which we modeled full scale in clay to pull molds from, which was some pioneering work in the Elkhart, IN. RV industry at the time. Mr. Fred Hoadley, retired from Ford, led the clay work in his usual highly professional manner. :).
Nice idea, not sure if installing it on an Astro is a good idea. GM decided that a single hydraulic cylinder on the right frame rail was enough to lift the cab. Anyone who worked on an old Astro sleeper cab can tell you how badly these cabs would shift and twist as you jacked it up. Dropping it back down was another job to get it back into its rear cab mounts.
Jacking up cabovers was always a bit nerve wracking. When you get to that point where the cab goes over center and gravity is going to take over you had to be ready to reverse the jack hydraulics to control the cab to full open tilt. Before that you had to go thru the interior to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that was going to fall out and take out a windshield. I did have one heart stopping instance with a White/GMC/Volvo Road Commander COE. It was queen sleeper model, huge cab, truck was only about a year old. It was in our shop for service work. The cab was going up, close to the tip over point and the left front cab mount snapped in two. The shift tower kept the cab from dropping and making a real mess. It was total chaos as we tried to figure out that mess. Luckily the shop we were in had 20 ton overhead gantry cranes. We bolted two 10 foot shelving beams together wrapped them with towels and placed them thru the door openings to support the cab. We used the other gantry crane to lift at the rear of the cab. With the cab now suspended from two gantry cranes with three 20 ton cranes securely holding the cab in place we could now disassemble and figure out the repairs needed. We air-freighted in two new front cab mounts and put it back together. The Volvo rep showed up when we were putting it back together, it was still under warranty. He didn’t think the right cab mount needed to be replaced, we put it in anyway. Wasn’t going to chance that the twisting it endured was going to cause another failure down the road. I always had a great deal of respect when tilting those cabs but this one really put a chill in my bones for good. As it turns out my career would soon leave the COE’s behind. At the DOT cabovers were few and far in between and my operation had none.
Wow, seen a few pictures of these but never in person. Did the sleeped actually tilt with the cab?
Sure hope so, cab needs to tilt for some service work.
I was wondering if you slid it back on the frame. Looks like it might not be connected to the day cab.
I’d be worried about the height on that, the Astro/Titan was a very tall cabover.
Would sure discourage gaining any weight.
Seen one on a Freightliner cabover day cab back in the day. The owner driver was leased to C&H Transportation a Flatbed/ Specialized Carrier out of Dallas, TX.. The truck had a metallic UPS Brown color.
European cab overs are still based on this concept. DAF and Scania, Volvo, Mercedes, etc.
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Fascinating… not what I expected at all.
I happened across an actual LivLab brochure. It does indeed tip up and to the rear to allow the tractor cab to tilt for engine access. BTW, these things were not cheap. Total price installed was almost $17,000. What I found to be most impressive was the whole setup only weighed around 1,900 lbs..
I saw one on a Peterbilt cab behind from the same era. They wanted 115k for it. Darn things look pretty neat.