MAN Trucks come from a company with a long engineering tradition. Now, alongside Scania, MAN Truck & Bus is under the ownership of the Traton Group, the heavy truck arm of Volkswagen.
The company builds trucks from 7.5 tonnes GVW right up to heavy haulage versions plus a great deal of military trucks (for the UK as well). More recently, MAN has rebranded the VW Crafter van to become the MAN TGE van, available from 3.5 tonnes, completing their range.
Popular uses for MAN trucks in the UK are tractor units, with many kitted out suited to ADR pet regs. This expertise was inherited in the UK from MAN’s takeover of ERF who had a strong position in this market.
MAN Trucks were making things out of metal hundreds of years before trucks were even invented with a history dating back to 1758. However, the company adopted the name, ‘MAN’ as recently as 1908. About fifteen years before this, Rudolph Diesel famously invented – you guessed it – the diesel engine whilst working for the business.
This is some heritage.
The first trucks the company made were as early as 1915, seven years after the reorganisation and rebranding to the snappy title of ‘Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG, Augsburg’ (or M.A.N. for short).
MAN has been at the forefront of many technological firsts over the years. The early twenties saw MAN produce their first diesel engine truck with direct fuel injection. MAN was working on turbocharging for trucks and all wheel drive utility vehicles prior to the second world war during which it sustained major losses.
Bouncing back after the war, supercharged diesel engines were the next success from the workshops of MAN in 1951, whilst 1955 saw MAN open their truck factory in Munich.
The famous lion motif didn’t appear on MAN’s trucks until the start of the 1970’s when the company took over Büssing. This is how the ‘Braunschweig lion’ found its way on to MAN’s product logo.
At the same time, MAN entered into a joint venture with French truck maker, Saviem to sell their light and medium weight trucks. After the French deal cam to an end in 1977, MAN joined forces with VW for the first time which ran until 1993. This saw the cab from the LT range of vans used on a lightweight 7.5 tonner – to become the G90.
The start of the 1980’s saw the launch of the ‘90’ range of trucks with the G90, M90 and F90 – also known as the ‘FMG’ range with the F90 achieving ‘Truck of the Year’ status in 1987.
In the UK, we had the G-Series 6.90 and the 8.90 and later the rocket ships that were the 8.136 and 9.136
The G Series was replaced by the L2000 and M2000. Unhelpfully, the model range was never desperately prominent on the truck cabs and identifying which truck is which has proven difficult in the used truck market. Is an LE8.150 an L2000? (renamed from the LE in 1999 as were heading into the new millennium). Why did the M2000 use both the large and the small cab with the M2000L and M2000M? Not worth dwelling on this issue these days, as very few of these older trucks are available for sale in the UK – most of them will be sold for export and the precise model number will be of less interest.
The ‘TG’ or Truck Generation range was started with the TGA winning the Truck of the Year title in 2001. No shortage of cab types in the TGA – operators could specify sizes from L, LX, XL, XLX, and XXL.
The lighter-weight ranges had to wait until 2006 to get the new cabs that are the basis of today’s trucks. The new TGL and TGM light and medium duty trucks were visually modern and an immediate success. This coincided with the launch of the MAN common rail D20 diesel engines for Euro 4 use.
MAN stole a march from the Swedish manufacturers with the launch of their flagship TGX models with the 680HP V8 range-topper becoming the most powerful truck in Europe. The replacement for the TGA, the TGX is the high roof, flat floor long-distance truck, whilst the TGS is a lighter-weight truck more suited to local distribution operations, including 8 wheel tipper work.
MAN took an almost unique technical approach to the Euro 4 standard. Instead of using the ‘SCR’ approach favoured by most manufacturers, the company opted for EGR to clean the engines to reduce the particulate and NoX emissions. Read more about the differences here.
In summary, however, SCR uses Adblue to treat the exhaust prior to it entering into a catalytic converter, whilst EGR recirculates the exhaust gases into the engine. SCR is the more straightforward solution technically, but the downsides are truck operators having to buy and use Adblue in their trucks. With MAN using EGR only meant that operators buying MAN trucks did not have to invest in infrastructure for filling trucks with Adblue, hence their popular ‘just add diesel’ campaign.
MAN, like most other European manufacturers carried out a total range refresh to coincide with the strict Euro 6 emissions standards that came in for 2014. At this time MAN had to implement SCR alongside their EGR solution, so no more ‘just add diesel’.
The 15-litre engine became available in the TGX and TGS at 520, 560 or a whopping 640hp
To better compete with the likes of Mercedes-Benz with their full range of vehicles, MAN benefits from the ownership of VW with the introduction of a rebadged Volkswagen Crafter as the MAN TGE. Available from 3 to 5.5 tonnes GVW it meant that MAN was able to compete for business from customers needing a full range supplier.
February 2020 claimed to have “generated a new truck generation for the first time in 20 years.” Although the trucks looked very similar to the earlier models to the untrained eyes?
It was anticipated that MAN would have used the Scania cab (they are now both part of the Traton Group owned by VW). Instead they opted to change the gloss grill to a matt version and moving the lion around with the front bumper leaning a little on the Actros appearance. Oveall the new TGX cab looks slightly more streamlined and sporty.
Many changes to the interior and some nice design changes. There are eight different cab types with new versioning – it’s not straightforward:
GX, GM and GN (low roof) for the long distance cabs (in order of size) these are all 2.44 metres wide.
FM cab (2.24 metres wide) for TGL, TGM and TGS trucks – it is the same length and height as the larger GM, just narrower.
FN cab is the low-roof version of the narrow cab (so like the GN but narrower).
The day cab version is called the NN and MAN claim will typically be found on the TGS as a bulk tipper or mixer operation.
The CC cab is another day version but shorter than the NN – intended for use in the TGL and TGM.
Finally, the four door, crew cab version is the DN will be seen on the TGL and TGM.
Citing issues in the supply of component parts, MAN has stopped truck manufacturing at their main Munich plant from 19th March. Production at other plants across the world is being assessed and may well follow suit, at the moment, production is being scaled back. The health and safety of employees was also a factor in…
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There were more new trucks sold in the UK in 2019 than in the two preceding years. With an impressive 48,535 registrations last year, we saw nearly 13% more new trucks appear on our roads than in 2018 after number shrinking for the previous two years. All this despite a series of stalled Brexits and…
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There was much speculation about the long-awaited revised cab for the MAN TGX range. Since the tie up with Scania (they are now both owned by Traton – a Volkswagen subsidiary) it was thought that the new cab would be based on Scania’s new cab seen in the R and S series trucks. The big…
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Truck Manufacturers usually go to town on information at the time of a truck launch. Typically this is too detailed for the average reader, but some may wish to delve a little deeper than the summarised versions we put together on our product pages. So if you are interested, then please read on… New MAN…
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MAN Trucks is spending a wad of cash on the dealer network – some £20 million to be precise. There have been a series of recent openings of new MAN dealerships with Gateshead finished in November 2019. Replacing their existing Earlshead facility that has dealt with MAN trucks since 1996, the new dealership is on…
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