Yup, it's a shame there aren't more truck manufacturers in the American version, but either way, I still paint all my trucks up like a tart's handbag lol:

 

I pretty much stuck with driving the Kenworth T680, but that's mostly because that's the truck I'm most familiar with. I never really liked the Peterbilt 579, having driven them twice, albeit not very far distances.

From what I remember about American Trucking is I was once a Manufacturing Engineer in a Cummins Factory that produced about 100 engines a day. I worked there from 2003 to 2006. 

Truck Companies and Truck Culture in North America don't like each other. Even guys who drive the smaller Fords, Chryslers or GMC trucks swear by their own truck and don't like the other guys truck. Ford guys loves his Ford and makes fun of Chrysler guys and Chrysler Trucks.....ETC

This was the same working at Cummins. The guys from Corporate would come and visit the factories and hand out stuffed animals to the workers of dead Flattened Cats, with tread marks all over them. The reason for that is it represented a dead Cat, being Caterpillar, This is Cummins biggest competitor so the corporate message to employees was, 'the only good Cat was a dead Cat'. 

American Truck Sim does have the Cummins Engines in it so they must have had a licencing agreement for that. Which would likely mean that Caterpillar wasn't interested in it, and likely Caterpillar being as big as they are would have other ideas in how to better use their products in Simulations as they also licence a lot of toys and other domestic products with their logo's as well.

This probably is the same for other manufacturers like for example Mack may not be interested because Paccar signed up and etc etc etc.

In Europe the manufacturers don't behave this way. In Germany for example companies actually help each other even though they sell competing products, reason for this is Germans help each other to produce better German Products for the better good of Germany, this is just how their culture works. American Corporations will create massive competition and sue each other for market share and try to drive each other out of each others market share, this is an example of how European thinking differs from American thinking.

It is not surprising there was more cooperation for the European version as most of those companies would just think it was really cool, and the US trucking companies are far more protective of their brands. Anyhow, this is just as I see it from working for Cummins and what they are like and how they like to treat and abuse the competition as part of their corporate identities. 

22 hours ago, Captain Kevin said:

I could have told you that. I see them all over the place. Though I guess I also see a lot of Freightliners, too.

Of course you could Kevin, you are after all in the industry...

Until I started using ATS I'd never paid much attention to large trucks, aside from defensive driving of course! Once I started looking for the "diagonal slash" on the front end, I'd never noticed them as "Volvos..."

Then I spotted no fewer than six within the first ten minutes of my next drive to the VA Clinic.