Turbine Trucks: The Gas Powered Big-Rigs of the 1960's 

Video Sponsored by Ridge Wallet. Check them out here: ridge.com/sideprojects and use code "SIDEPROJECTS" to get 10% OFF on your order.

I was only half listening and heard “satisfying whine” as “satisfying wine” and was immediately baffled as to how a truck that makes wine didn’t catch on.

You should do a video on the story of rediscovering the Big Red truck. It's super interesting. The Drive, did a long investigation and managed to find the owner who has completely restored it to working order, even though he hides it and doesn't use it.

Ultimately, gas turbines are great at base loading, but you try to use one in typical stop ang go city traffic and all that advantage goes straight to hell. An idling turbine burns almost as much fuel as a loaded turbine. With high capacity Li-ion batteries today this could work. The turbine only fires up on the freeway, but electric drive is used for slower small street travel. It could work. Nobody willing to chance it these days though.

We had Giant Natural Gas turbine Generators on a Gas Drilling rig I worked on. It was pretty awesome hearing them spin up to full speed.

The more I watch Side and Megaprojects videos. it seems more and more that ingenuity, innovation and imagination was more prevalent in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's, and products from any industry since 90's to now or days are just designed to keep the consumer coming back and spending money.

My Dad retired last year, after 45 years as a truck driver. This was a fascinating video. Truckers are criminally underappreciated for what they give up to get everything we live with from point A to B. Thank you, Simon and production fam! ❤️

I'm a trucker myself and I absolutely love these. I really want to drive them.

Whichever editor is inserting your B-roll shots really needs to pay better attention. For just three examples, when you mention an Allison vehicle transmission, the image is of a complete Allison V-1710 aero engine out of a P-38 fighter; when you are talking about the post-war potential for long-haul trucking, the image is of a mining dump truck, a type of vehicle that stays in one location through its working life; and when you are talking about a tractor unit hauling a tandem trailer, the screen shows a farm tractor hauling harrow over a farm field. That last might be the most egregious but also the most understandable. I have noticed a similar decline in the quality of the editing in this manner in your other recent videos. No doubt the sheer quantity of video production across your various channels produces such errors but it hurts the credibility of each video.

It feels really good to be the first person to skip a ridge wallet advert!

Now, we have from New Zealand, a jet powered electric garbage collection truck. The jet looks like a large turbo charger, running all day at it's most efficient speed. That quietly charges as does regenerative charging from the continuously applied brakes. Being confirmed in trials now.

In worked at an engineering co while in college in the mid 80s. They had a prototype gas turbine engine installed in a big rig that carried a loaded trailer 5 nights a week on a delivery run between LA and Phx. When the army put out a RFP for a gas turbine to propel a tank, we were able to respond that we already had one. A tank, sans turret and motor was delivered to us for installation of an engine. The commander who was put in charge of testing the concept did not like the idea and figured it would be a quick failure by starting his testing near Yuma AZ where sand, dust and heat would make short work of the ‘delicate’ turbine. After having to replace multiple sets of tracks during the test, he finally admitted defeat as the motor never failed. One of the key benefits to the engine was that it could run on multiple fuels. All that said, gas mileage was never a criteria I heard discussed.

7:42 Not a transmission. That's a stock photo of the Allison V-1710 aircraft engine lifted right off Google.

Last I heard Big Red is still in existence and is owned by a rich collector who is restoring it after years of neglect in storage. It's story after Ford finished using it was strange. Several years ago Peterbilt and Wal-Mart cooperated on an Diesel/electric concept truck that used a micro turbine utilizing air bearings to charge a battery pack which was supposed to be much more efficient then a regular diesel.

You should do a video on the various attempts at making a successful steam turbine locomotive.

Gotta love how when he refers to an Allison automatic transmission. They show a picture of an Allison V12 engine.

As a kid I remember seeing the turbine powered Kenworth that was running from Portland Oregon and Vancouver B.C. It was odd looking through clear panels in the tilt hood where an engine should be seen.

There is a large photo on a hallway wall in a Solar Turbines office that shows a developmental turbine power plant in a cabover truck chassis. I'm sure it was when International Harvester owned them. I don't know any details, but it's a pretty good looking install. I could not identify the turbine family, but there were several recuperated models that might have been chosen for such an experiment in the sixties. Much larger stationary applications are Solar's turbine market now. The smallest current production model makes about 1300 horsepower, and burns about 2 gallons a minute on diesel fuel. The little ones will run for years without any major service, sometimes a decade or more, even with some benign neglect.

The GM Bison looks very similar to a Hot Wheels tractor trailer from the late 60s and early 70s from their Heavy Weights line. They were still 1:64 scale trucks, and in addition to the tractor trailer, there were a few other variations like a tow truck, I think a box van and a couple others.

International Harvester purchased Solar Turbines in the 1960's. They did this with the design to compete with the big three if the Gas Turbine highway hauler was ever put into production. The company built 4 prototype units based on the standard designed CO3080 cab over highway truck instead of the diesel they install a 450 HP Solar turbine coupled to an Allison Automatic transmission. These units were driven around the US and Canada towing loaded triple trailer configurations to show the power at highway speeds of 70 MPH. One of these units ended up at the Auto show at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto where I saw it as a young man. My father worked for International Harvester as a fleet sales man at the time in Toronto. Later I went on to work for Solar Turbines for 27 years in Canada and the over seas market in a number of different positions. International Harvester sold Solar Turbines to Caterpillar in the early 1980's ending their relationship with Solar.

That Chevy Turbo Titan 3 seems like it would have been a REALLY Great Truck for all of General Motors Car Haulers. Because of the way that the Cab Forward design would have made it Perfect for the vehicle on those trailers that’s in those spots right behind and above the Cab of the Trucks Rig

I wonder if turbine hybrids would work. Use the electric motor for the power needed for acceleration, and the turbine provides a steady supply of power at a low weight.

The Bison looks like it would have been quite at home rolling out of one of Thunderbird 2's cargo pods on a mission for International Rescue.

At 8.12 minutes, 2.15 MPG is 0.9 litres per km or 110 litres per 100km. Not 9 litres per km which is actually amazing for a 77 ton truck. Modern 77 ton road trains consume between 40-60 litres per 100km.

That gauge panel in the Titan III looks like it inspired the panel for the 73-87 chevy/gmc truck. The 4 guages on the left and the 2 next to it are damn near identically placed.

Simon... love most all your videos. However, when describing the statistics on the turbine engine a picture comes up of what looks to be a V-12 piston engine (unless I miss my guess). Possibly it was a reference to the Allison transmission and not the engine it is attached to. Just had me confused for a moment. Nonetheless, great work and keep them coming. All your videos are my go-to for relaxation each day after work.

The photo you showed for big reds Allison transmission was a V12 airplane engine. At least it was an Allison though!

The Bison is how I picture a real world Rodimus Prime would look.

You say Allison transmission and then show a picture of an Allison V12 engine....

I think it's hilarious seeing the stock footage of a camera on some reporter at a fencing match.

I first heard 9 km/L, but it is .9 km/L. In Europe, we calculate in L/100km. So about 110 L/100km. 45 ton trucks nowadays need 32-37 L/100km. In the 70ies it was about 50 L/100km. But with 85 km/h and not about 140 km/h.

Cover the turbine car. They worked, and a couple still exist. Jay Leno has a video about his, if anyone is interested.

Could you cover the GM Multi-rotor rotary engine prototype? (the one with a small and big rotor)

What's up w the pic of the Allison V12 when taking about an Allison truck transmission?

Lovely Space-/Jet-Age "Raygun Gothic" designs, would have loved to see all of what we was thinking about in those years. Maybe not everything was feasible, but why do I have to stop dreaming?

This was great. I would have loved to see these in person, I can imagine how stunning these were when standing near them.

The gas turbine at ford was my fathers project, he told about everyone lining up in dearborn to drive the turbine truck.

Turbines are most efficient when you can spool them up and leave them there. Better to couple them with a generator designed and wound for the higher shaft speed and look towards using them for local power generation.

Weird! About 2 days ago I was wondering why there were not turbine powered cars or trucks!

Big Reds Cab sat at Wood Brothers Racing in Charlotte North Carolina for quite some time during my youth. It was a huge vehicle. Eddie Wood of Hendersonville North Carolina.

its could be worse, he could be pushing Raid Shadow Legends....🤔

I loved the look of these 60's Gas powered trucks.

Okay, I've got a sideproject I dont know if you see them from here, but maybe some people will give me a like so this gets noticed. 1978 GMC RV Home, it was designed by freakin NASA and I wanna know why it failed because looking at them now, they should have taken off imo.

Episode proposal: Oroville Dam crisis Keep it up fact boy👍🍻🌮

In 1960, the fire apparatus manufacturer American LaFrance built at least two Turbine powered apparatus. An Engine that went to San Francisco, and a tractor drawn aerial that went to Seattle.

"people and freight were moving more efficiently than ever" trains: *"am i a joke to you?"*

The GM Bison looks like Rodimus Prime's vehicle mode.

Watching this is like watching the track of electric vehicles. Several times, they have been hailed as the future. And yet, they fail every time and the humble piston keeps chugging along.

Love the shot of the Alison "transmission " -looking for all the world exactly like an Alison V-1710 12 cylinder, liquid-cooled AIRCRAFT ENGINE. That's some stealth transmission yo.

This was an awesome video!!! I’ve loved trucks all my life and still drive a semi today. I NEVER KNEW ANYTHING AB THESE TRUCKS! Really enjoyed this and new sub. Thanks

Way way cool. Not sure what I find more impressive - the turbine or the design / tech of the amenities and styling of these wonderful test beds. Too bad this osn't really happening that often these days

The Bison looks more like something from a Gerry Anderson production... :P

Damn! They were way ahead of their time!

It's amazing that new regular diesel pickups, like an F450, can tow 40,000lbs and still get nearly 20mpgs 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫. Everyone thinks diesel is the devil but they're massively efficient. Especially when you talk about diesel locomotives.

The Mack Turbine test truck from the late 70s I believe is still running and can be seen at the Mack Trucks Historical Museum in Allentown, PA

Turbine engines even competed in the indy 500 but never actually won. They had one pole position for the race however. They lasted only a few years

The General Motors Bison legit looks like something out of Captain Scarlet or a rejected vehicle from Thunderbirds!

BEST HOST ON THE INTERNET.

There's a whole bunch of stuff in that truck Crazy

The Ford Big Red reminds me of the film ‘The Big Bus’.

Standard trailer length is now 53' Axle weights of 12,000 / 34,000 / 34,000 lbs respective (drive to tandem)

A toilet and a shower would be very welcome in my sleeper. You'd be amazed at companies that make us use portable toilets esp. during Covid

The gas turbine useful when you don’t have risk of rocks getting into the turbine and getting turbine salad

Nice to see the bison way ahead of the twin stick shooter craze

Two cycle diesel engines, please make a video on these. My dad was a truck driver for all the years of his life pretty much. He talks about them but I've never seen one. They were used in the 1970's but not much after that

The GM one looks like the basis for the Oscar Meyer Weiner car🤔

British Leyland did one. I think its still going too

-Turbine engines are a DEAD END when it comes to ground transportation. Why? Simple; They are NOT efficient power plants at all! In my spare time I fly a 767 in order to pay the bills. [You see, when I am home, all I do is work on the house, the boat, three cars, and the "honey-do" list that is endless~] This vehicle weighs about 181,000 pounds empty, can take off at up to 406,000 pounds, and at altitude at 550 mph it burns about 3 gallons of Jet-A [kerosene] per mile. Average fuel consumption at altitude varies but it is generally betweeen 10,000 and 8000 pounds per hour. First of all, turbines are TERRIBLE when it comes to internal energy use: Fully 75% of the energy that the turbines recover is used to drive the engine in the first place! The compressor wheel of a turbine engine accelerates air between stages, then decelerates it in the diffuser sections to increase compression. EVERY time you accelerate air you create a tremendous amount of drag and this drag uses energy. Most turbine engines have upwards of a dozen stages, so there enormous amounts of energy spent just compressing the air. An Otto cycle engine is WAY WAY WAY more efficient in this regard! And then there is the turbine. A tremendous amount of energy just flows out of the exhaust past the turbine and then expands in the atmosphere, the expansion is what we want in the first place; Again, the spinning turbine wheel, probably 10,000 rpm uses up a lot of energy in simple parasite drag. Parasite drag: Increases with the square of velocity. That means if you double the speed you quadruple the parasite drag. Going from 30 mph in your car to 60 mph quadruples the air drag.... Piston engines have NONE of these problems, but the monstrous problem with these engines is WEIGHT. The 767 I fly has 62,000 pound thrust engines; I've been told the entire cowling and pylon/engine assembly weighs about 13,000 pounds. The piston engine that could reliably produce that amount of power is a Wartsilla cruise ship engine that probably weighs upwards of 1,000,000 pounds. Which means that the airplane is not getting off the ground, no matter how long the runway is..... NOW; Turbines in trucks: Trucks are commercial vehicles that are basically devices that are designed to make money for their owners. The huge fuel consumption of turbine engines at low altitudes due to the thick air isn't mitigated the way it is on modern airliners. So they suck the gas down like it is going out of style, and the only advantage of the turbine engine, the fact that it is VERY small and VERY light for the power it produces? Well, it means nothing in a heavy road truck. That is why you don't see turbine cars or even trains. -I am however waiting for Bugatti or some other very specialized car manufacturer to produce a turbine car; The problem is that the startup of a turbine engine is VERY problematic, and while it works with airline pilots like me who understand these devices and their vagaries, the average rich guy who would buy one of these probably does not. I almost bought a Porsche 928 with a Boeing 502 turbine engine a few years ago, and what kept me away was the fact that it was a rare engine with no parts support. Otherwise I was the perfect candidate to be the next "keeper" of this car, since you never actually own a 928.

The non-conventional steering wheel of the Chevy Titan III may seem odd to those who have only driven passenger cars. I haven't driven long-haul trucks but agriculture equipment and sometimes you have to spin the steering wheel 4-5 times to get the wheel where you want them, and having a spinner on the steering wheel is great. Having a full-sized steering wheel is great if you lose power steering but generally having a smaller wheel with a spinner would be ideal.

The Bison is straight up out of Capt. Scarlett. Or vice versa.

Simon, as a Retired Truck Driver, thank you for getting all the terms correct.

9:26 The General Motors Bison looks like it is a truck from The Thunderbirds

Once upon a time long ago, I had a chance to talk to the sales manager of the Ford heavy truck dealership in St. Louis. He said he'd driven the Ford experimental, prototype gas turbine truck. He was not impressed by it at all. He said the engine took way too long to "spool up," to rev up, and so it accelerated very, very, very slowly. And once it got up to speed it drank fuel like crazy. He saw no market for the truck at all, which turned out to be Ford's conclusion as well. Still, you never know unless you try the idea out.

Walmart and Paccar (manufacturer of Kenworth and Peterbuilt ) collaborated on an advanced experimental Truck called the WAVE A mulifuel micro turbine turning a generator which then powered electric motors at the drive axles could pull off all the tricks Tesla electric semi could but with coast to coast range . One even completed a cross country trip loaded averaging if I remember correctly 13.5 mpg

The one and only Chevy Turbo Titan III would be greatest barn find of the twenty-first century! (or any other century for that matter !:-)

wait a sec.... 9km per 1l is actually 11l per 100 km... it's great fuel economy!!! Some big cars get similar fuel efficiency, and it was a huge semi with 2 trailers! as a comparison, current model semis do over 20l per 100km!!!

Notice how those 1960s trucks were more aerodynamic than modern trucks

7:42 that is an Alisson engine, not a gearbox

I have driven a truck for 35 years and have listened to Simon's Casual Criminalist podcast for the past few months. I would love to drive one of those.

"Superhighways" "More efficient than before" Something doesn't add up there.

Shared route From Los Angeles, California to Washington, District of Columbia via I-80 E. 2 d 6 hr (3,591 mi)

Comparing these performance numbers to the 2023 Volvo FH I drive is pretty funny.

09:25 Looks like it belongs in a Coca Cola advert 😅 All these lorries look sweet though 🚛🚛🚛

Anyone ever notice that Ford's Big Red and Speed Racer's Mammoth Car look really similar. Just a question of - Who influenced who?

That ford COE was probably powerful it’s got a very short driveshaft not gonna loose power through that shorty

Tesla's Semi seems to borrow it's cab layout from Ford's Big Red - steering pod, wrap-around windshield, entrance door behind the driver's seat. Big Red is essentually the Tesla Semi of the 1960s! But it raises a concern - if that cabin was practical, you would think someone would have adopted it for a diesel semi. The door behind the driver's seat seems particularly inconvenient.

The Bison looks like something out of Thunderbirds.

it was a beautiful semi truck

Sounds like with modern technology that there may be options for a hybrid kind of system? Where an e-motor can drive in cities and acceleration/uphill and a range-extender/cruise motor may be a small-ish turbine. Instead of making a truck twice as big

I was around from 1950 on and never realized turbine semi tractors existed!

A diesel electric tractor makes the most sense but the reality of trucking is it has to be built cheap as possible to make company a profit. The conventional diesel tractor will never be replaced with anything else.

7:41 talks about a transmission, shows a V16 engine. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤣

big red is a spicy cinnamon chewing gum. a massive turbine powered truck, equipped for homoeroticism, will not freshen your breath.

I could use one of these in the windy corner of my yard

Thank you for no social commentary on this one.

The trailer having a trailer is called "piggy backing" so Ford predicted that on the nose now it's just small single axle trailers and you see him on like Long haul UPS trucks and stuff like that here in the states I don't know about England and other countries but here in America we still piggyback trucks from time to time I drive one

Turbine would have made more sense tied to an electric drive train like diesel locomotives. Even better with a battery to take up burst load and regen. (I know that was immature at the time)

Small mistake: 2.15 mpg is about 0.9 kpl. For the European people, that is about 110 liters per 100 km.

Considering you can convert food waste into biodiesel I wonder if the gas companies had anything to do with this scheme.

We're 75 feet long with a 53' trailer. Stretched Peterbilt with a 26.5' chassis and average 5.5 mpg. At this lenght, we often find limited space for parking. 2 lane roads in the northeastern states can be a nightmare especially when flanked by parked cars on both sides. No doubt if engineers can't equal the dimensions of existing truck/ trailers, bridge heights and axle weights, rlthese concept trucks will never work. PS - Love my Edge wallets. Ive got 2. One for my daily ID cards and one for my fuel cards (x6) for worrk