European trucks use flat-nose cab-over designs to handle tighter roads and length limits, while U.S. trucks favor long hoods for space, comfort, and safety.
The sight of a semi-truck in your rear-view mirror is an imposing one for an American driver. That big, long hood is typically accented with a bold grille, sometimes clad in chrome, and the image is all too often finished off by a pair of shining stacks pointing up toward the sky. These don’t just look cool; semi-trucks have vertical exhaust stacks for a reason, but that’s another story – we’re more interested in the hoods of semi-trucks here, and specifically, why most European trucks don’t employ the same design.
European semi-trucks, or lorries as they are called in England, are typically flat-faced, like those found on a city bus or coach. This means they look entirely different from American semi-trucks, which is odd, as the two are still designed to excel at the exact same task. You’d think that one design would have proved superior throughout the years and would now prevail as the only option, but that’s seemingly not the case.
