Freightliner Semi Truck Motorhome Is a Luxury House on Wheels, Costs Rolls-Royce Money - autoevolution

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Photo: TLG Trucks/autoevolution

While Freightliner may not produce as many imposing models as the likes of Peterbilt nowadays, their trucks are still extremely popular and purposefully designed to offer maximum fuel efficiency. The Cascadia in particular is an extremely aerodynamic model thanks to its Aero package.

These new Cascadias are very impressive on paper. Not only are they good at that whole fuel economy thing, but they also come with uptime-boosting telematics and comfortable interiors that feature plenty of automated safety systems. Of course, if you're not hauling things over long distances all the time, fuel efficiency may not be your number one concern, although, can you really put a price on that type of peace of mind?

Anyway, what we're dealing with here is a 2023 Freightliner Cascadia that's been turned into a premium motorhome. It's got 7,832 miles on its Detroit DD16 engine, and it's up for grabs for no fewer than $439,950. That's pretty much what you'd spend on a brand-new Rolls-Royce Spectre (maybe even a new Phantom, if you can do some haggling).

Key features for the high roof mid-entry sleeper section include the 150-gallon freshwater tank, 75-gallon holding tanks, the 8-kW generator, Aqua hot system, awning, and the 200W solar panels. Meanwhile, inside is where you'll find a fully equipped kitchen with a convertible booth dinette, a two-burner induction cook top, French door fridge with ice-maker, sink, oven, a sofa sleeper, and a mini king master bedroom with a private bathroom (includes a shower) and a TV.

The cockpit section includes two captain's chairs, air conditioning, sat-nav, and a digital gauge cluster.

In terms of performance, the previously mentioned Detroit DD16 engine is mated to a 12-speed automatic gearbox and produces between 500 and 600 horsepower and up to 2,050 lb-ft of torque.

Photo: TLG Trucks

It's Detroit's most powerful inline-six truck engine, and it should have no problem putting in work propelling this motorhome, seeing as how it's built for "extreme-duty, heavy hauling and the world's biggest jobs," according to Freightliner. It's also where "power and performance collide," all in a durable and reliable package. This thing is a true workhorse.

Are there better options out there?

That's a fair question. You can certainly buy a motorhome for a heck of a lot less (even a premium one), but if you want a semi-truck-based product, well, those aren't going to come cheap. Just recently we showed you a custom 2023 Peterbilt 389 with a massive sleeper section that also featured a kitchen, bedroom, shower and so on.

That particular one was priced at $409,900 and the sleeper section was almost as nice as this – although the Freightliner motorhome is undoubtedly a little bit better put together from a logistical standpoint, whereas the Peterbilt one was more bespoke.