The North American bus manufacturer New Flyer and MAN Truck & Bus have extended their partnership for the supply of bus axles for another five years. The contract begins on January 1, 2025 and runs until the end of 2029. The order includes several thousand axles and spare parts worth over 200 million US dollars. The contract includes VOK-08 front axles and the HY-1350 rear axle series. The axles are used in the heavy-duty transit buses of the Xcelsior® series in lengths of 35, 40 and 60 feet (approx. 11, 12 and 18 meters).
David White, Executive Vice President, Supply Management New Flyer, emphasizes: “By building successful supplier partnerships, New Flyer positions itself to succeed even as market conditions and supply chain demands shift. We rely on partners such as MAN Truck & Bus to help ensure we continue to deliver high-quality, high-performance vehicles to our customers.”
Ricardo Barbosa, Managing Director of MAN Engines & Components, Inc. in Pompano Beach, Florida, adds: “We would like to thank New Flyer, as the US market leader for city buses, for continuing to trust in components and bus expertise of MAN Truck & Bus.”
The partnership between New Flyer and MAN Truck & Bus has now spanned more than three decades. During this time, MAN delivered over 80,000 bus axles, which are produced for New Flyer’s transit buses in a special track width of 102″ (2.591 mm) for the American market. A large part of the added value takes place through the production of the axles with corresponding engineering, service and aftermarket support in the USA by the US subsidiary MAN Engines & Components.
In 2023, the U.S. market leader New Flyer honored the supplier MAN with the Gold Supplier Award for its outstanding quality and delivery performance. This trusting partnership between the two commercial vehicle manufacturers New Flyer and MAN Truck & Bus manifested itself with the joint development of the VOK-08-F axle, which was presented at the beginning of 2024. Thanks to a more robust carrier construction, the new bus front axle offers an increased load capacity of eight tons. In this way, MAN is taking into account the increasing weight requirements of its bus customer due to the increasing use of hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell-electric and battery-electric powertrains.
New Flyer’s Xcelsior© series was introduced in 2010 and includes transit buses in nominal lengths of 35 feet, 40 feet and 60 feet as articulated buses. In addition to the different lengths, the buses are offered with a variety of propulsion systems: conventional diesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), diesel-electric hybrid, hydrogen fuel cell-electric, electric overhead line or trolley and battery-electric.
SOURCE: MAN Truck & Bus
