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In the largest county in the country, the FG medium duty 4-wheel-drive
truck is proving to be a truck for all seasons.
If you were asked to name a really good market for Mitsubishi Fuso FG medium
duty, 4-wheel-drive trucks with snow plow blades, southern California is not
likely to be the first place you’d mention.
But because of the new FG’s ability to handle pretty
much any road conditions, and any service duty required,
San Bernardino is a good place to find them.
First of all, San Bernardino County is not only California’s
largest county by area, but the largest county in the United
States. With a total area of 20,105 square miles, the states
of New Jersey and Massachusetts could fit inside the county,
with room enough to add Rhode Island and Delaware.
The county stretches from the outskirts of the Los Angeles
metropolitan area to the Nevada border. Within it lie the
Mojave Desert, Joshua Tree State Park and the San Bernardino
Mountains. Over the past decade, annual snowfall has averaged
a very manageable 10 to 12 feet. But years past have recorded
snowfall accumulations of 110 to 120 feet. That’s the
height of a ten-story building or a bit more.
The county has the responsibility for plowing and treating
approximately 450 miles of mostly two-lane, mountain roads
that vary in elevation from 2,000 to 7,000 feet. The snow
that falls in the mountains tends to be the wet, heavy variety.
In the daytime, with the sun beating down, the snow melts.
When the temperatures drop at night, the plowed-snow berms
freeze and become as hard as a brick wall.
Even the desert regions have some accumulation of snow,
and icy road conditions can be common during the county’s
snow season, which officially begins in the middle of October
and ends around Mother’s Day.
For snow plowing and road treatment, the Department of Public
Works of San Bernardino County had been using a fleet of
16, one-ton, 4-wheel-drive pickup trucks, equipped with snowplow
blades and sand spreaders. While the pickups were adequate
for the job, they were frequently out of service for mechanical
and body repairs, including damaged fenders, caved-in truck
beds, new brakes and transmission repairs. Meanwhile, the
department was constantly filing accident reports and insurance
claims on the pickups throughout the winter months.
The long-standing maintenance issues prompted the department
to develop a new vehicle specification that would eliminate
the major problems with pickup trucks used for snow removal
and road treatment. For example, a truck without fenders
would not suffer body damage if it hit hardened snow berms
on the side of the road, or if large balls of snow fell back
into the side of the vehicle during plowing. A vehicle that
was built for rugged applications would have a
transmission and brakes that were both heavy duty. And a
vehicle that had a rugged frame would do a better job of
supporting the weight of the sand used for road treatment.
Another issue with using pickup trucks for snow removal:
They come factory-equipped with air bags, which can be triggered
by the impact of the snowplow blade hitting frozen berms,
creating a safety problem for the operator. Disabling the
air bag was not an option the county considered.
The vehicle that best fit the county’s new specification
turned out to be a Mitsubishi Fuso FG 4-wheel-drive, class
4 medium-duty cabover. The county purchased 14 of these commercial
trucks and equipped them with 7-1/2-foot snowplows and a
flat-bed body.
With its 14,050 lb. GVWR and heavy duty frame, a slip-on
sander unit is easily chained down on the flat bed for the
winter season, then removed in the spring so the vehicles
can be used for applications such as hauling materials, roadway
repair and removing items left on the side of the road, including
refrigerators, sofas, and even dead animals. Because some
of these items are too heavy to lift onto the flat bed manually,
the vehicles are equipped with a half-ton lift gate.
For snow plowing applications, the FG’s weight distribution
and traction was more than adequate, and the operators reported
that there was no hesitation or bogging down when plowing
10" of fairly heavy snow. Compared to the pickups, the
FG medium duty trucks are sturdier and have been more dependable.
They’ve proved to be highly maneuverable and just as
easy to drive as the pickups. That’s important to the
county because of the number of part-time employees hired
in the winter specifically for snow removal operations.
The one concern the county had initially about the FG was
the lack of a track record with these vehicles. After completing
a full snow season, though, the county is considering replacing
its remaining pickups with additional FGs.
So, if you’re ever asked to name a place where medium
duty commercial trucks are being used to meet the challenges
of maintaining roadways in a mountain-desert-rural-urban
environment, while dealing with all manner of extreme weather
conditions, you’ll know to mention San Bernardino County,
Calif., and the Mitsubishi Fuso FG.
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