New Building & Equipment Aids Freightliner Truck Testing
Engineers and technicians at Freightliner Group's Test Engineering Center in Indiana are now using a new 24,600-square-foot shop and office building to support their mission of battering trucks to death to make them better.
The new facility brings together efforts formerly scattered among several older, smaller buildings at the Robert Bosch Corp.'s 675-acre proving grounds west of South Bend.
Freightliner leases space and use of the testing areas from Bosch, and agreed to extend its lease to get the large, modern building, which cost about $2.5 million, explained Al Pearson, director of the company's Vehicle Test Group. Technicians drive Freightliner, Sterling and Western Star trucks and other vehicles over various types of rough pavement and off-road terrain, then evaluate the results so the products can be improved.
The evaluation part of the process is done in the new building, whose 100- by 240-foot shop area has eight drive-through bays to accommodate heavy and medium-duty trucks, school buses and motor home chassis. It also features a 45-foot drive-over pit for vehicle servicing, and three overhead cranes for lifting heavy equipment. Computers to diagnose and recalibrate vehicles are in work areas and adjacent office space.
"In our new building, we will have much greater capacity to inspect and service vehicles and document testing performance," Pearson said. The company began test engineering work here in 1980, and steady expansion over the years caused the need for more space. One truck - a Freightliner FLC cab-over-engine road tractor - was tested in '80; now as many as 21 vehicles of many configurations can be tested at any one time.
Vehicle testing includes accelerated structural durability evaluations, brake system development and certification, stability testing, interior/exterior noise testing, power train endurance, cold weather performance and fuel economy. Advanced safety enhancement systems are also tested here before fleet testing.
"This is the place where we push the company's vehicles to their limits," said Ramin Younessi, Freightliner Group's chief test engineer. "We want to ensure that every vehicle produced by the company will stand up the rigors of operation and perform safely, productively and consistently for our customers."
Competitors' vehicles, too, are tested here so engineers can compare them to Freightliner's own products, said Gary Holse, who's managed testing at the proving grounds since Freightliner began operations here a quarter of a century ago. The sprawling facility, which includes a high-speed oval as well as rough-pavement and off-road courses, were set up in 1926 by the old Studebaker Corp., which built cars and trucks, and before that, horse-drawn wagons, in South Bend. It went out of business in 1966. The facility was subsequently acquired by Bendix Co. and later by Robert Bosch Corp.
Today, accelerated durability testing is Freightliner's principal activity here, Younessi said. This evaluates the structural integrity and reliability of every component on the test vehicle - from cabs to chassis to frame rails to major components like engines and transmissions. One mile on the test course produces wear and tear equivalent to as many as 83 miles in real world operation. Millions of equivalent miles are covered every year.
"Imagine the worst road you have ever driven on," Younessi said. "That's what we run our test vehicles on every day, seven days per week. "It takes some very special test drivers to be able to meet the rigors of our operation, and some very special test engineers to be able to inspect and determine the structural integrity of the components."
After vehicles complete their specified test runs, they are evaluated by Freightliner Group test engineers for the nature of wear and tear. According to Pearson, that's where the new building and its state-of-the-art equipment will prove highly useful.
