1999 sterling w/cat engine

I think Sterling is the Canadian version of Ford. You see a fair number of them on the road.

I drove a Sterling with a C-13 Cat engine and 10 speed. It was a day cab, and did not have air ride suspension on the cab. It was owned by a Co-op and I pulled hopper bottom trailer hauling corn, beans, and fertilizer. We always had 80,000 pounds on the scale, so the little 13 liter Cat had to work to pull it....but it worked just fine. It did not have any options, not even a jake brake. It did have an air slide 5th wheel though, and that was about it. It had a bouncy ride due to no air ride on the cab.

We had it inspected and serviced locally....never any problems with it. It is one of the lower cost tractors out there. I would want one with air ride cab though....man it was rough on my neck. The seat was air ride, but you need air ride on the cab too!

I don't see where parts would be a problem for it.

 

Ford sold the rights to their AT and LT series of trucks in 1997. They were bought out by Daimler A.G. (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, and Western Star, as well as the former parent company of Chrysler). Daimler A.G. revived the Sterling name to market them, as Sterling had, in the past, been used to market Freightliner products. Technically, legal rights to the name were still owned by Volvo A.B. - however, the marque had been out of use for so long that Volvo had no grounds for a legal objection. They are NOT a Canadian version of Ford - Fords are Fords in Canada.
In a nutshell, the trucks are crap. They are, however, fairly popular for daycab and vocational truck applications because they have a very spacious daycab design, and they're cheap - even more so now, because people would rather cut their losses. They went out of production in 2009, because Daimler wanted to shift focus to the Freightliner and Western Star brands, and wished to consolidate.. remember they had to sell of Chrylser two years earlier. The cabs have a bad tendency to rust. They had a real annoying tendency to put sand guards on their brakes. While this had some practicality in sitework/vocational vehicles, it made the brakes a PiTA to work on, and was very undesirable on a road tractor, as it caused the brakes to retain heat, making it easier for them to overheat. The interiors are real bad for falling apart. If you have anything larger than a 13 liter motor, the engine fan is likely to remain on almost constantly, since a good portion of the engine doesn't get sufficient airflow, and retains a lot of heat. This has been my experience with Sterlings both with the 14.0 Detroit and the C15 Cat. Even with the 12.8 MBE4000, the engine fan had to run more than it should have. You'll notice that most of the Sterlings you see are either vocational trucks or daycabs... there's a reason their sleeper berth trucks never really caught on. Namely, because their sleeper berths were as shoddy as the rest of the truck.
This is probably not the truck you want.

 

Might buy it for the engine if your lucky, 1999 was the last year for mechanical CATs.

 

If I were you, I'd jump on it if priced right. We have one, 2000 with n14 motor. I grew fond of it and my Dad loves them. Was a salesman for Sterling at one point. I'd say a great truck and main reason they were discontinued was due to them out selling freightliners. Them being part of freightliner, off they went. Parts are avail on Ebay. Can't but them anymore else where. Can get freightliner parts and you may have to do some fabricating, but my advice would be a do it.