Freightliner Business Class (FL-Series)


The Freightliner Business Class is a range of medium-duty trucks that was assembled by the American manufacturer Freightliner Trucks from 1991 to 2007. The first medium-duty trucks sold by the company, the Business Class was sold as both a straight truck and a semitractor. During the late 1990s, the Business Class would become popular in bus applications, in both cowled-chassis and cutaway-cab configurations.
In 2001, Freightliner introduced the Freightliner Business Class M2 as the second-generation Business Class, selling variants of the FL-Series through 2007.

Design

The first all-new medium-duty conventional truck range introduced in North America since 1980, the design of the Freightliner Business Class was derived heavily upon an existing product range. Using the mass-produced cab of the Mercedes-Benz LK introduced in 1983, which had already been transplanted into other Freightliner trucks like the FLC112 in 1985, Freightliner began development on its first medium-duty truck, essentially serving as a replacement for the Brazilian-built Mercedes-Benz L-Series trucks sold in the United States. Freightliner had been owned by Daimler-Benz since 1981, and tooling up for the production of a crash-tested steel cab is among the most expensive items in truck development. Thus, sharing a cab structure is a major cost-saving procedure. Competitors from Ford and General Motors used pickup-truck cabs.

Variants

Truck

Introduced in 1991, the FL-Series would feature a full range of medium-duty trucks in the Class 6-7 range. In place of the FLC112 named for its BBC, the initial models of the Business Class were identified by size range. The FL60 was a Class 6 truck; the FL70, a Class 7 truck.

Bus

In 1997, Freightliner began producing the Business Class for bus applications; the Freightliner FS-65 cowled chassis is produced primarily for school bus use. Additionally, the Business Class was also produced as a cutaway cab for non-school bus bodies. Following the acquisition of Thomas Built Buses in 1998, the FS65 was bodied by Thomas exclusively after 2001.