It’s a perennial question on many and varied topics, but the question, does size matter? is also relevant in the truck world.

There’s cab size and engine size and many other things to consider, but for Tim Giles, or any driver, cab and engine size do make a difference.

20 years is a long time in the world of trucks and trucking, it is also the time between my very first drive of a Mercedes-Benz Actros with a MegaSpace cab and my most recent experience with the latest version of the Mercedes-Benz Actros GigaSpace truck.

It’s rather easy to say that the difference between the two is pretty much chalk and cheese. Probably the most important difference between that truck 20 years ago and the one which PowerTorque magazine is testing now, is the fact that this truck is definitely fit for purpose, whereas there were a lot of question marks about the truck which was tested in 2003.

It’s not a good idea to dwell on many details of that MegaSpace, which was brought to Australia for the 2003 Brisbane Truck Show, apart from mentioning that it was very tall. It had quite a big powerful engine and it had been designed for the major motorways of Europe.

As a result, running it around the rough, badly maintained highways of Queensland was a bit of a queasy experience with such a tall cab swinging from side to side as well as forwards and backwards.

Image: Prime Creative Media

The engine was of course the Mercedes-Benz V8 engines engine which was a great performer, but it drove through a so-called semi automatic transmission which left a lot to be desired and certainly did not come into its own on the climb up Cunningham’s Gap towards Warwick.

Thinking back on that test drive, it was a completely different experience in contrast with spending some time with the GigaSpace truck which was brought over to the 2023 Brisbane Show.

The contrast couldn’t have been greater, with this latest truck being a fit-for-purpose design which could suit many tasks in the Australian transport industry, and do a good job

One of the first things anyone would notice walking up to this truck is the sheer height of it. This is a tall truck, which may have a long climb up into the cabin, but it has that feeling of spaciousness once inside the flat floored cabin.

The other size we were looking at is all about that other major component to truck driver satisfaction, engine power.

In this case we are dealing with the latest 16L produced by Daimler for Mercedes, the OM 473 six cylinder in line diesel engine, which has been developed from the global engine of platform developed by the Daimler organisation in the 2000s to go into all of its heavy duty vehicles, across three continents.

Here we are dealing with an engine which provides the driver with 630 hp under the right foot and 3000 Nm (2213 M) of torque to get the job done. This is a well proven engine, which has seen the Mercedes Benz market share rise due, mainly, to its fuel consumption figures and economic performance.