Truck engines don’t usually get as much fanfare as those of the big luxury coupes. Perhaps it’s because they’re built for grit over glamour. But take a closer look, and you’ll find a few that earned legendary status through pure performance and reliability, like the ones built by Caterpillar. The company made its mark in the 1980s with the 3406 and 3408 engine family. These engines were efficient enough to dominate the Cat-sponsored competition that highlighted fuel efficiency in trucks.
Even the people who drove them every day knew they were special. In the Cat Haul Talk podcast, Alan Kitzhaber, longtime owner of a 3406E, recalled that “when you stood around at the truck stops and debated which engine to buy, you didn’t have too many people argue when you said that Caterpillar pulls better.” Such praise made it hard to imagine that the company would quit building truck engines.
However, the increasingly strict EPA emission standards through the 2000s saw Caterpillar adopt the Advanced Combustion Emission Reduction Technology (ACERT) system. It used a series of precise fuel injections and cleaner combustion processes to reduce emissions without relying on cooled exhaust aftertreatment. Unfortunately, keeping the system reliable proved difficult as ACERT engines were costly to build and harder to maintain.
Why Caterpillar quit making truck engines
While several factors played into making Caterpillar quit making truck engines, the cost implications stood out. The company had spent well over $500 million on developing the system. As Jim Parker, Caterpillar’s vice president of engine marketing, told Construction Equipment at the time, “It has been the most expensive, largest development program Cat has undertaken. We’ve spent more on it than on development of the high-drive tractors.”
And even though ACERT engines met the tough emission rules (the rules would only get tougher later), Caterpillar had to repeatedly rework its engines. Each new EPA phase meant fresh engineering, testing, and compliance costs on top of the massive investment already sunk into ACERT. The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments became a cycle of escalating expenses. Initial limits applied to 1994 models with stricter thresholds for 2004, and even tougher benchmarks set for 2007 and 2010.
By the mid 2000s, Caterpillar’s on-highway truck engines made up only a small portion of its total business. Caterpillar’s 2008 annual report stated that on-highway engines made up about 8% of its entire engine production. In 2010, Caterpillar realized the system was unsustainable and left the on-highway truck engine business. The company refocused on off-highway markets like construction, mining, and industrial power.
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