The current glut of used trucks on the market is a major problem for lots of folks. But it's a boon to anyone in a buying mood, even if what you get was set up for another kind of work. If you can put an older highway tractor back to work, whether over-the-road or locally, you can save some serious money.

Construction trucks don't need sleepers, especially the integrated kind. Though Freightliner is converting some SleeperCabs to daycabs at a special plant in Utah (as we noted in our last issue), it's cheaper to leave the sleeper alone and take it along for the ride.

That's what Scott Haas does with this 1994 FLD 112, with which he pulls a 2000 Red River "live-floor" trailer. The 30-foot trailer carries hot asphalt to paving jobs in southeastern Wisconsin, or did until shutting down for the winter in mid-December.

C.M. Sobczyk Trucking runs six Peterbilt 378 "quads," with four rear axles (a tandem and two liftable pushers) and a steer axle - the standard dump truck in this state. Jeff Sobczyk, the small fleet's vice president, bought the used Freightliner expressly to pull the Red River trailer, which works better than the straight dump trucks in high-volume paving jobs.

Steal of a deal

Why a Freightliner in a Pete fleet? Peterbilt Wisconsin in Waukesha, Sobczyk's dealer, had taken the FLD 112 on trade, and a plan to resell it had fallen through. It was a bare-bones tractor with a short, flat-roof sleeper - not an overly desirable tractor on anybody's lot. The dealer needed to get rid of it, and offered it to him at a wholesale price of $14,000.

So the price was right, Sobczyk said, and the odometer reading of about 453,000 miles wasn't bad. Best of all, it was fairly lightweight and had a long enough wheelbase - 210 inches -- to let it pull the short Red River trailer and still legally scale 80,000 pounds gross.

Then came about $13,000 in refurbishing and modifications in Sobczyk's well-equipped shop. New paint, aluminum wheels, dual exhaust stacks and extra amber marker lights improved the tractor's looks. He and Haas, who would drive the Freightliner, also added strobe lights on tractor and trailer for extra visibility on paving sites.

The tractor also got a "wet kit" to power the trailer's hydraulically driven floor belt. For this they used the same parts as on the quad dumpers: a Chelsea PTO, mounted at the bottom of the transmission; a Commercial Shearing hydraulic pump; controls on the floor of the cab; and a 55-gallon tank for hydraulic fluid.

The sleeper, of course, isn't needed, and probably accounts for 300 or so pounds of the tractor's tare weight of about 16,000 pounds with all tanks full. But Haas said he does use it occasionally, sometimes to stretch out when his chronically sore back becomes painful and work time allows, and sometimes just to take short naps.

Once he overnighted in the sleeper while working over in Madison, about 70 miles northwest of home, to save a motel bill, "and I got a real good night's sleep," he declared. You can't do that in a daycab.

Two inches = 10,000 pounds payload

In concept, the trailer came before the tractor. Sobczyk said a customer asked him to get one for an upcoming highway paving project. Although the customer didn't win the bid, the rig has still proved its worth on other projects. It's excellent for high-volume "line" jobs - long, straight, street and highway surfacing - and wherever overhead obstructions can interfere with a lift body.

Payload of 24 tons, however, is no higher than with a lightweight quad. And Sobczyk said a local State Patrol trooper has been nitpicking the trailer and - surprise, surprise - found a detail that cuts allowable weight on trailer axles. The tridem formed by the trailer's tandem and its pusher axle is supposed to legally carry 42,000 pounds. But the trooper measured it and declared that the pusher is 2 inches too close to the tandem, so the tridem's legal gross is now 38,000.

Red River will take the trailer to its Fargo, N.D., factory over the winter break to make some modifications in other areas, and will also move the pusher axle forward. If it can be moved 6 to 8 inches forward, the tridem would move into a higher weight category, which would clear up any questions. With 38,000 pounds on the tridem, the tractor needs to carry 10,000 to 12,000 on the steer axle and 28,000 to 32,000 on its tandem.

Live-floor ends tip worries

Haas said he prefers driving this live-floor semi to other rigs. "I've driven [end] dump semis and quads," he commented as we headed for a paving job on a dark and chilly day in November. "The thing with this is, you don't have to worry about trees, utility lines and bridges. The body stays level so those things aren't in the way. And you never have to worry about tipping over, either."

I met Haas at an asphalt plant along Interstate 94 near State Highway 20, west of Racine. After I climbed in he moved over to a materials pile, backed up to it and disgorged a load of 3/8-inch chips for asphalt production - one of the few backhauls the trailer is capable of.

Then he wheeled over to the asphalt plant, pulled under the chute and loaded quickly, taking on three 8-ton "dumps" of the steaming-hot material spaced along the trailer's length. He got his tickets, deployed the motorized tarp and headed out the gate and south on I-94.

The load was for a street-paving job in Twin Lakes, about 20 miles southwest. From I-94 we headed west on Highway 50, a stretch of four-lane concrete that time and truck traffic had bowed. Even with air-ride and a full load, the rig jounced some and Haas stayed in the wide highway's smoother left lane. A county road took us south about a mile to the job site.

"How do you like driving a Freightliner?" I asked him.

"Well, I like my Peterbilts," he smiled. "This is no Peterbilt. I don't like the cab as much. It's bigger than on a Pete, and I like being able to just reach across and grab the other door. And," - he gestured out the windshield - "there's not much of a hood out there. I'm used to a longer hood, and I'm not used to it sloping down like this.

"But actually, it does okay," he continued. "And, when I first started driving it, I was really amazed at how good it was going down the road." In other words, it rides well. This tractor-trailer, with widely spaced axles and both tandems suspended on air bags, rides smoother than a squat, quad-rear-axle straight dump truck.

Haas would definitely like more power. He was used to Sobczyk's now-standard engine, Caterpillar's 380- to 430-horsepower C-12. The Freightliner has a smaller Cat 3176. "It's only a 350, so it has to work harder to get up to speed. It takes you longer to get you there, but it does get you there," he said.

As Haas approached the paving site, he grabbed his CB mic and quizzed other drivers about the best place to turn around. "You can probably make it right up here, Scott," said one driver who was close to the paver. Haas instead turned right into a side street about a half a block away, turned on his strobe lights, and backed out to his left.

"This takes a little more room than with a quad," Haas said, "but you can usually find someplace close to do it. Backing it is a little tricky, though, because the trailer's short and reacts so fast. It's like pushing a rope sometimes."

He concentrated on the steering wheel and mirror as he pushed the trailer toward the machine. Soon he was snugged up to it. He reached down for some switches that unlocked and raised the trailer's small tailgate, engaged the PTO and used the controls' joystick to begin moving the belt and transferring the hot asphalt into the paver's bed. He watched the crew's hand signals and varied the belt's speed accordingly. In about seven minutes the trailer was empty and he pulled away.

Tight cab, smooth ride

Up ahead he pulled over to scrape asphalt residue from the tailgate area. I climbed in the driver's seat and slammed the door. It rattled as all FLD doors seem to, but latched solidly. The cab was still pretty tight after 470,000 miles - sometimes you have to crack open a window to close the door, Haas said - and a powerful heater helped it stay warm and cozy in spite of the November chill outside.

The FLD 112 ran like most other road-going FLDs I had driven, with more than acceptable feel to its controls, a decent ride and good visibility all around. In a few blocks we returned to Highway 50 and I turned right toward I-94, and I was already getting used to the transmission. It was an Eaton Fuller Super 10, something almost never found on a construction truck. Of course, this tractor wasn't built for construction, but for over-the-road steel hauling, Haas had said.

The Super 10 is best operated in a leisurely manner. You go through a basic 5-speed pattern only once and "split" each gear to get the 10 ratios. It's a lot like driving a 13-speed in high range and ... Whoa! Suddenly I was doing 65 miles an hour in a 55 zone. Time to slow down, and I did.

The ride while empty seemed better than while the rig was loaded, the opposite of what I expected. Maybe it's a function of the overall short wheelbase vs. a typical freight-toting 18-wheeler with a 48- or 53-foot van. Still, this Freightliner seemed perfectly happy in its second life.

I pulled the rig into the asphalt plant and turned it back over to Haas. Time was short and so was this trip, but enough to see what a good used truck can do, financially and on a typical workday. Is there one on a lot, waiting for you?