Together for a change

On- and off-highway commercial vehicle industries converge at fourth-annual Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress & Exhibition.

While there are inherent differences between the on- and off-highway industries, the most glaring one being that one's equipment is most at home in the dirt of fields and job sites and the other is suited for the blacktop of the highway, those who are familiar with the SAE Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress and Exhibition (ComVEC) will tell you there are a great number of similarities as well.

“What I find interesting about this event is you're cutting across several industry segments that when you actually get underneath the surface, underneath the veneer, you find people start to talk about their customers, they talk about technical issues they face, they talk about the business issues they face, and it sounds like it's the same conversation,” said Deere's H.J. Markley, Co-Chair for the 2007 event to be held October 30-November 1 in Rosemont, IL. “The benefit of a gathering like this is you find you're dealing with the same types of issues. Maybe a John Deere vs. a Freightliner or a Navistar vs. a [Caterpillar], but when you listen to the issue, it's similar and what you really get is a larger population of potential solutions that get brought to bear by getting a group of this type together.”