Wabash National to develop walk-in cargo van, add to portfolio of home delivery solutions

Wabash National Corp. (Lafayette, Ind., U.S.), offering engineered solutions for the transportation, logistics and distribution industries, has announced plans to launch a walk-in cargo van by 2023, adding to its expanding portfolio of home delivery solutions. The new offering will most likely take advantage of the company’s patented molded structural composite (MSC) technology, like its refrigerated trailers, or the collaboration with TrinityRail (Dallas, Texas, U.S.) for a railcar floor.

Wabash is engaging in rapid development concept and design in collaboration with EDAG Group (Wiesbaden, Germany), an engineering services provider to the global automotive and commercial vehicles industry. Wabash and EDAG are contributing their expertise in body and cab design, respectively, to create a next-generation walk-in van.

“With the introduction of a walk-in van body, Wabash adds a product line critical in supporting key customer efforts to efficiently scale home delivery driven by ecommerce,” explains Kevin Page, senior vice president – customer value creation. “The industry-leading breadth of our first to final mile portfolio allows us to offer ease of doing business to our customers and also positions us to partner with customers to develop innovative solutions to solve the biggest problems they face within a rapidly changing logistics environment. Our portfolio of solutions, capacity for innovation and customer-centric structure are critical inputs that combine to allow Wabash to fulfill our purpose of Changing How the World Reaches You.”

A new walk-in van body will add to the company’s existing solutions in dry and refrigerated freight, parcel delivery and curtainside. This announcement comes on the heels of Wabash’s recent launch of a new home delivery refrigerated truck body that also features the company’s MSC technology, creating what Wabash contends is one of the most sustainable solutions in the market.

Page adds, “Advanced material technologies, lightweight designs and electric vehicles [EVs] are just a few of the areas we think customers can leverage to stay competitive in the rapidly changing transportation, logistics and distribution space. Wabash is the visionary leader that can turn these breakthrough ideas into practical solutions.”

Wabash expects to begin production of the walk-in cargo van by the end of 2022, after validation and testing with key pilot customers.