"Companies lost thousands, if not millions..."? Come on Canary, there were only two of those tractors built by Strick as demos. Trucking companies never invested in them.
"A SPORTS CAR BENEATH A TRAILER: THE STRICK CAB-UNDER
Truck manufacturers have put the cab behind the engine, over the engine, even beside the engine. But it took a trailer manufacturer to put the cab in front of the engine – and under the trailer.
The extraordinary Strick “Cab-Under” was the brainchild of engineer Ronald Zubko, now retired in Farragut, Tenn. “To me, a truck is a tool,” he says. “It’s not something that has to fit a certain aesthetic mold or configuration. It can be whatever it needs to be to get the job done.”
The Cab-Under began as “one of those back-of-the-envelope daydreaming things,” Zubko says. In the mid-1970s, customers were clamoring for ways to get more cubic feet of capacity into trailers without violating strict federal length requirements of 55 feet in the East and 65 feet in the West.
“So I sketched one of these things that showed the driver sitting underneath the trailer,” Zubko says, “and my boss said, ‘That’ll never work.'” For one thing, the boss argued, it would be terribly uncomfortable for the driver.
Shortly thereafter, the boss turned 50, and his wife gave him a 46-inch-high Maserati sports car. “He came in saying, ‘This is the most comfortable thing I ever drove. Let’s look at that design again.'”
Then Zubko and two assistants spent a year dismantling a new International cabover and radically rebuilding it on a special frame. “It was like having a hobby and getting paid for it,” Zubko says.
The result was a heavy truck that wasn’t just a flatbed but a flat everything. The tractor stood only 48 inches high, with 81/2 to 9 inches of ground clearance. The cab was ahead of the front axle, and the Cummins V2 903 engine rode in a low-slung “possum belly” in the middle. The trailer rode on top.
“We could pull standard 27-foot doubles, and the 55-foot overall length limit was nearly all storage,” Zubko says. “That was a lot more cubic content, exactly what our customers were clamoring for, and the economics were quite significant.”
In eight months, Strick calculated, the additional freight hauled per run – especially light cargo – would pay for the cost of the truck. Fuel economy, 7 mpg, was good because the design “cut down on all the drag of a traditional tractor-trailer,” Zubko says.
The first interested customer was a maker of bubble wrap. “Sealed Air toured the company with our Cab-Under,” Zubko says, “and it generated a lot of attention, especially from the police.” At every stop, the driver had to show the paperwork to prove that yes, officer, it is a legal vehicle.
Strick ran exhaustive tests on such things as the truck’s braking ability and the line of sight from the driver’s seat, Zubko says. “You’re basically sitting in a semi-reclining position, like you’re in a sports car. If you’re sitting in the Cab-Under, and you drive up alongside a Corvette Stingray, you’re in exactly the same position.”
For safety, the Cab-Under driver was encased in what Zubko calls “a NASCAR-like roll cage, a half-inch of solid steel,” but that was not enough to keep from running afoul of politics. U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy denounced the Cab-Under as unsafe. Future Public Citizen leader Joan Claybrook, then head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was not impressed when Strick brought the Cab-Under to Capitol Hill for a demonstration.
“The driver had driven it for six months cross country,” Zubko says. “He said it was one of the safest and most comfortable vehicles he’d ever driven.”
The Teamsters took the Cab-Under to the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan, which confirmed everything Zubko knew to be true. “It was a stable vehicle,” Zubko says. “It couldn’t jackknife because there was no kingpin. In a rollover, the driver would be better off than in an articulated vehicle.”
The report also noted downsides. “An impact against a low, rigid barrier such as a retaining wall would be a problem, and in very bad weather, the splash and spray from the road surface would be a visibility problem,” Zubko says. “That was a valid criticism.”
There was talk of using the Cab-Under design in dump applications, or as a ladder platform in emergency vehicles, but Strick ultimately decided to remain a trailer manufacturer, not a truck manufacturer, Zubko says.
Only two Cab-Unders were built. The improved second model, which had an 84,000-pound hauling capacity, was sold to a German who used it to haul flatbed building materials in Europe; it’s now in a German museum. The original is in Zubko’s garage."
“It’s a relic of a bygone era,” he says. “You don’t have a chance to do something like that very often. People are very resistant to change.”
https://www.overdriveonline.com/back-to-the-future/