The winner of the Truck of the Year Australasia 2024, the Western Star X Series was a long time in the making. It’s here now and PowerTorque has looked into the origin of the X Series, a ground breaking range of trucks for the Australasian market.

The story of the Western Star X-Series began back in 2014/2015, when the team at Penske Commercial vehicles first started looking at a model range to take the brand through the 2020s.

This is a story of bringing new levels of safety and efficiency to the brand, without compromising the qualities the brand had been built on over the last 40 years, as the new trucks passed through the design process.

The requirements included meeting the latest regulations which were expected to be mandated, as well meeting the expectations of the trucking industry in the coming decade.

Also included in the process were deliberations needed in starting work on any new truck, designing and integrating trucks for as many applications as possible and enabling ever more efficient logistics.

Image: Penske Australia/Supplied

It was also important to include the latest and greatest technology and design being developed for the Western Star brand by Daimler Truck in North America in an X Series range specifically tailored for the Australasian market.

At that time, when the design process began the date for the next round of exhaust emission regulations to be implemented had not been finalised, but the team also new it was inevitable.

As it happens the design process was able to get trucks able to meet the ADR 80/04 limits well ahead of the mandated date for the introduction of November 1 2024.

There was clearly a need for a new engine platform and after treatment to meet the ADR as well as taking Western Star into the fuel usage levels being asked for by the trucking industry at this time. Any new driveline would also have to meet the durability expected in Australasian operations.

“Overall, we launched the X Series with the goal of having the strongest and most durable Western Star truck to date,” says Kurt Dein, Head of Western Star Trucks.

“Looking back, we had launched the Constellation from Western Star back in 1998 and had gone through three emission changes.We’d gone from the C 15, then into Euro 4 and EGR, and then we went into the Detroit DD platform.

“By that point we had exhausted the architecture and packaging to reach the point where the Australasian market, and the global market was going for the next round of emissions.

“The next Detroit platform under the Daimler portfolio would include safety systems and we just didn’t have the architecture to run those system and things like the multifunction steering wheel capabilities, and so forth. We could see where the fleet volume and demand was going, looking for safer compliance needs and an improved emission platform.

Image: Penske Australia/Supplied

“The Western Star engineering team came out here to Australasia, and we created that product concept, made a roadmap, and a product definition. We needed to identify what segments we were playing well in, and not so well in.

“What do we need from a driver’s fit, from a safety fit and from a fuel packaging fit point of view? Then there was bumper-to-back-of-cab (BBC), because2013/2014 had been the era of truck and dogs, when they went from 52 to 57.5 tonne GCM.

“I was lucky enough to be part of that conversation with key customers, when I was an independent dealer. It was asking, what’s the market after today, and what’s the market need for the future? What key milestones do we need to achieve?

“If you look at Western Star, we’ve always had a very strong truck, but a heavy truck. We’ve always been a very strong build. The frame rail has been key. We’ve had a steel cabin, we’ve had a big solid brass core cooling package and big stainless steel air cleaners and we’ve never lost a truck because it’s snapped.

“But when it comes to safety, innovation and efficiency, how do you make that lighter? How do you make it stronger? Can you make it last?

“It was really looking at the frame and working from the frame up on X Series. It was about achieving the strongest frame rail that Daimler has ever put into one of its products.”