Freightliner Cascadia 2020: Review

One hundred million bucks. That’s how much it has cost Daimler Trucks to get the Freightliner Cascadia built in right-hand drive and onto the Australian market.

For a country with a demand for heavy-duty trucks as comparatively low as ours, that’s a big investment.

But Daimler Trucks reckons it’s worth it. The Cascadia is the biggest-selling truck in the USA and Daimler Trucks Australia has high hopes for the big American-built truck here.
On paper, it looks the goods, and the guys at Daimler have done their utmost to test it in our conditions to make it fit for purpose in our market.

They’ve had trucks out here testing and sending data back to head office in Portland, Oregon for over two years and they’ve covered many hundreds of thousands of kilometres, both with Freightliner drivers and in real-world Australian fleets.

Along with that testing, Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) has done literally millions of kilometres of testing in the USA. In fact, at one stage it had 50 trucks out testing at the same time.

As Freightliner Australia boss Stephen Downes put it when testing was going on here: “We know what a 400,000km truck looks like; we know what a 700,000km truck looks like, but my key point is this: we can be supremely confident that DTNA has delivered us a magic truck.”

So, with all that testing under the belt, we were keen to have a drive. Sure, I’ve driven the Cascadia here on a test track and in the USA, but I was really keen to try one on our roads, in our conditions.

Related reading:
Testing times for Freightliner Cascadia
2020 Freightliner Cascadia: Pre-Launch Review
Linfox adds Freightliner Cascadia to its fleet

The Cascadia comes in two sizes, 116 and 126, meaning a BBC (bumper to back of cab) measurement of 116 inches and 126 inches. The 116 is powered by a 13-litre Detroit diesel with a 505hp/1850lb/ft (2508Nm) rating, while the Cascadia 126 sports a 16-litre Detroit with 600hp/2050lb/ft (2779Nm).

Both get the DT12 OE2 heavy-duty automated transmission or you can opt for an 18-speed Roadranger if you prefer.

Our test truck was a Cascadia 116 Day Cab with the DT12 transmission which, incidentally, is rated to 140 tonnes.

It was fitted with 3.42:1 RT46 Meritor diffs and Freightliner AirLiner suspension.
Our fuel tanks were specified with 490 litre on the left and 360 on the right with 200 litres of AdBlue.

We were towing a single trailer and were weighing in at about 42 tonnes but you can get a GCM of up to 70 tonnes for B-Double work.

Climbing up into the cab of the Cascadia is a breeze with substantial grab rails on both the A and B pillars, and once in you’ll find a comfortable multi-adjustable suspension seat that prompted our photographer to comment that it was more comfortable than his lounge room when he was up there taking some interior photos.

The steering wheel bears more than just scant resemblance to that of the Mercedes-Benz Actros we reviewed recently both in shape and functionality. This is great for the driver as you can scroll through the vehicle systems on the central screen, which provides plenty of information from trip meters to temperatures of the oil and the diffs.

The radar cruise is also on the wheel as are the audio and telephone controls. Everything else is ergonomically laid out and easy to access and read. It’s a genuinely easy truck to understand and get used to, whether you’re an owner/driver or regularly swapping around trucks.

The Cascadia is touted as being the safest conventional (bonneted) truck on the market today, and in fact it’s one of the safest trucks on the road, period.

The full gamut of safety gear includes the standard ABS, ESP, seatbelt pretensioners and the like, but adds extras like radar cruise (which is a beauty), and pedestrian detection that alerts the driver to the presence of a pedestrian on or about to cross the road. If the driver doesn’t respond, the truck will hit the picks for you.

That’s linked as part of Freightliner’s Active Brake Assist (ABA) which will pull the truck up if it thinks you’re closing too quickly on the vehicle in front of you.

Then there’s lane keeping detection, adjustable distance for your cruise control and speed overrun detection if you’re rolling down the hill too fast.

Our Cascadia was also fitted with a side radar, called Side Guard Assist, that can ‘see’ a car on your left-hand side. If you indicate to change lanes towards the adjacent vehicle, a light will illuminate on the A pillar and an audible warning sound alerts you to the hazard.

And if that’s not enough you also get auto lights and wipers and ‘intelligent’ high beam that will dip the lights for you when it detects an on-coming vehicle.

On the road, the Cascadia is a dream to drive: it’s smooth and quiet and just a nice place to be. At one stage I had to follow my photographer to a destination where he wanted to take some shots, and the Cascadia did it with ease. Around town, at 42 tonnes, the Cascadia could easily keep up with the traffic and on the freeway, I just set my radar cruise to 95 and let the truck follow the photog’s little car like a faithful puppy.

The steering is great. It’s light and very direct with no slop, so you’re not continually ‘sawing wood’ with the steering wheel. And vision is excellent. The broad, deep one-piece screen gives a great view and the sloping bonnet doesn’t impinge on the view of the vehicles in front, even if they’re close.

The DT12 automated manual transmission is a beauty. The shifts are smooth and it’ll happily skip-shift and land in precisely the right gear for the job. It’ll lug down low up hills (lower than you’d go if you were driving a manual) but then kick down a gear or two to get the rig easily over the top.

The gauges are big and easy to read and the ancillary switches are logical and fall easily to hand. I would have liked a GPS screen to the left of the dash where there were a couple of little storage nooks for your phone, pens or snacks, but I was told that’s an option.

Our test truck was fitted with optional bonnet-mounted mirrors which I can either take or leave. I reckon four mirrors is enough and having just come out of a couple of days in the Mercedes-Benz Actros with no mirrors as at all, they actually confused me a bit…

At the end of the drive, I felt I needed more. We’d spent a day in the Cascadia, but with photography and traffic, we hadn’t really had a full run of, say, a few hundred kilometres or a good four-hour stint behind the wheel.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked it. I just wanted more. Maybe that’s testament to how easy the Cascadia is to drive, and how refreshed I felt at the end of the day. I’d really like to have a full day of just open-road driving to really get to know it.

When I looked at the fuel figures, it bore out the fact that we’d had a stop-start day with a bit too much city driving. We returned a figure of 2.06 km/litre which while not bad, I reckon could be well improved upon. One operator that we are aware of is getting around 2.14 km/litre from a loaded B-Double which sounds more like what I had expected.

Overall, the Cascadia is a great truck, of that there’s no doubt. It is easy to drive, quiet, comfortable and really a pleasure to be in. It’s also one of the safest trucks on the road and certainly the most technologically advanced bonneted truck on the Australian market.

Freightliner is offering a great range of cabs and styles and whether you’re looking for a linehaul truck or something for around town, there’s sure to be something to suit in the lineup.

The Cascadia is by far the most popular truck in the USA and it’ll be very interesting to watch and see if that translates to our market.

Specifications:
Engine: Detroit DD13
Configuration: In-line six-cylinder
Displacement: 12.8 litres
Compression ratio: 18.4:1
Bore: 132mm
Stroke: 156mm
Weight (dry): 1128kg
Electronics: DDEC
Service fill (oil/filter change): 38 litres
Horsepower range: 350-505hp
Torque range: 1595-2508Nm (1250-1850lb-ft)
Rear-engine PTO: Optional
Transmission DT12 automated manual
Cab: Day cab
Fuel: 490 litres left, 360 litres right
AdBlue: 200 litres
Rear Axles: Meritor RT46 160GP
Axle ratio: 3.42
Suspension: Freightliner AirLiner
GVM: 26t
GCM: Up to 70t (higher GCM available)
Safety: Detroit Assurance 5.0, Active Brake Assist (ABA), adaptive cruise control, land departure warning, intelligent high beam, auto wipers/headlights, Side Guard Assist (SGA), Detroit Connect with fuel and safety analytics.