The Freightliner Business Class M2 is a Medium Duty Class 7 truck that has dominated its segment since its introduction. The M2's ease of flexibility and customization while retaining core performance have earned it high marks in the haulage industry, with some trucks surviving well beyond their service life expectancy. Freightliner is an American subsidiary of Daimler-Mercedes-Benz and many have speculated this German influence to be the reason for the extremely well received build quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overview: The M2 began production in 2002 to replace Freightliners aging FL platform which was introduced in the 1990's. Mercedes-Benz took over ownership of Freightliner in the 1980's and ceased selling its own trucks in favor for its newly acquired subsidiary. Mercedes-Benz wanted a medium duty truck which could be adapted to fill many different roles without the need of drastic redesign. The FL platform was the product of that thinking. The FL platform however was plagued with being a good idea executed poorly. The M2 was developed as its replacement.

 

 

 

Driving Experience: As the M2 is a more refined product over its predecessor the M2 handles better than its competitors in this segment. However, early examples of the M2 were not as refined and many still used Mercedes-Benz Engines which were considered vastly underpowered for the various types of work the trucks were being asked to perform. This caused the M2 to gain a reputation for being slow. The current incarnation of the M2 has the Engine and Chassis components are American products while the suspension retains its German influence.

 

 

 

The M2 chassis comes available in a bus configuration known as the C2. Freightliner and Thomas Built Buses entered into an agreement in which Freightliner would supply the C2 chassis to Thomas and Thomas would build its famed Saf-T-Liner School Bus body onto it creating a very safe low cost school bus sold under the Thomas brand as the Saf-T-Liner C2. The Saf-T-Liner School Bus body uses fewer rivets as its created as one piece making the body more rigid. The agreement between Thomas and Freightliner has been extremely successful as the C2 sells just as well as its M2 counterpart. The Saf-T-Liner C2 can be found in the fleets of School Districts nationwide. Newer variants of the C2 and M2 can be altered to run on CNG or Propane.