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Mission demands for U.S. military tactical trucks require them to transport a broad array of cargo types, including intermodal containers. The wide range of mass properties associated with these diverse cargo requirements has resulted in potential for steering stability issues. The potential for steering stability issues largely originates from the high mobility characteristics of single-unit military tactical trucks relative to typical commercial cargo carriers. To quantify the influence of cargo variations on stability, vehicle dynamics experiments were conducted to obtain steering stability measurements for a tactical cargo truck hauling a broad range of rigid cargo loadings. The basic relationship for the understeer gradient measure of directional response behavior and observed data trends from the physical experiments were used to evaluate the relationship between the steering stability of the truck and the mass properties of the cargo.

As a result of increased demand on the range of cargo types that U.S. military tactical trucks must transport, the effect of variations in the mass properties of the cargo on the roll stability of the trucks has become a serious issue. Vehicle dynamics experiments were conducted to obtain roll stability measurements for a tactical cargo truck hauling a broad range of rigid cargo loadings. A simple statics analysis for roll stability and the data obtained during the vehicle dynamics experiments were used to evaluate the relationship between the roll stability of the truck and the mass properties of the cargo. The results of the evaluation demonstrated that roll stability, quantified as the lateral acceleration at the wheel-liftoff threshold, can be accurately characterized as a function of: (1) the lateral center of gravity over the vertical center of gravity and (2) the longitudinal center of gravity over the wheelbase length.