Saurer trucks

[cfesmire]

Does anyone know if the Saurer trucks produced today have any relationship to the Saurer Truck associated with Mack Truck in the U.S. around 1918?

[stanhas87]

Dear Chester:

According to Nick Georgano's Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles:

The Saurer truck was produced in the US from 1911 to 1918; these vehicles were imported to the country around 1908 and started to be assembled by then. Actual manufacture started by 1911 and a company,International Motor Co. was formed and that was a holding company for the sale of Saurer,Mack and Hewitt trucks. In 1916, Mack introduced its AC model and two year later, the Saurer production was discontinued. (Assembly location: Plainfield,NJ).

I do not think Saurers are in production any longer. This make started to exist in 1903 and was gone around the 1990's.You may know that this was a Swiss Make, and were known in the US at the first transcontinental truck drive in 1911. The make was known in several countries including Japan,Russia and Uruguay and was also produced in Austria,France and UK.

Nick K

[cfesmire]

Thanks Nick, I didn't know they weren't made at all anymore.

[BillC]

Chester: Saurer trucks were produced up until 1987 with much of the production going to the Swiss Army. of Faced with declining sales in the late 1970s, Saurer and FBW, Switzerland's other truckmaker, formed a joint company called NAW (which stands for the German equivalent of "Truck Company of Arbon and Wetzikon"). Daimler-Benz acquired controlling interest of NAW in 1982 (a year after it had acquired Freightliner) and continued production of Saurer trucks to fulfill existing orders. The last new Saurer, an army 10DM, left the factory on February 12, 1987.

NAW continued as a manufacturing subsidiary of Daimler-Benz and DaimlerChrysler until 2000, when 51% of the firm was sold to Sachsenring, a German parts manufacturer and contract assembler. In 2002, Sachsenring declared insolvency amid accusations of management misconduct (or at least poor management) and NAW was liquidated.

The Mack brothers sold their company in August 1911. International Motor Company, which had been producing Saurer trucks under license since 1907, becames a holding company for Mack Brothers Motor Car Company and Saurer Motor Company. The manufacturing was separate, but the sales and service functions were combined. International continued to produce the Saurer into the early 1920s.

Incidentally, the first loaded truck to cross the U.S. was a Saurer in 1911.

So the answer to your question is: Yes.

[skunk]

Bill, your responses are always worth waiting for.

[stanhas87]

Dear Sirs:

I myself I am glad about NicK Georgano's Encyckopedia of Commercial Vehicles.The only problem with that book is the fact that was published in 1978,so I could not tell precisely when Saurer went out of business. Other problem: as far as I know, it was not updated (that is,published later on).Otherwise,all the other data, such as the started of the Assembly and finally manufacture of this truck in the US,International selling outlet and how this truck finished the 1911 cross-country run was all interesting. This encyclopedia covers over 4000 makes and at times,such as Saurer, these become interwined with other concerns.

[only87]

I remember reading an article about that 1911 cross-country truck on the internet somwhere. As far as I know the Saurer Oldtimer club managen to find such a truck or at least one that was very similar in Argentinia or Brazil being in a daily use on a farm! They managed to buy the vehicle and bring it to Switzerland. Here are some pictures of this undertaking:

www.saureroldtimer.ch/medien/frame_center/galerien/caminhao/index.html?