Bruck (vehicle)

A bruck (blended from the words bus and truck) is a type of bus or coach built to combine goods and passenger transport where it is most profitable or most convenient compared to separate vehicles. The word bruck was used in North America. In Australia they were known as passenger-freighters. In Europe they are known as Kombinationsbus (German), seka-auto (Finnish), kombibuss (Norwegian) and godsbuss (Swedish), with even the nickname skvader. They have for practical reasons mostly been built on front- or mid-engined chassis. In North America and Australia this type of bus was introduced in the late 1940s as a replacement for unprofitable railway lines, while in Europe they have been around since the first buses.

A bus of this type is different from an ordinary bus, in that it has a separate cargo compartment that can be either closed or open air, and is by specification built for carrying goods in route traffic.

When the first automobiles were put into route traffic in rural areas, in many places they often took both passengers and cargo, including the mail. Many routes evolved into separate routes and vehicles for every purpose, but some stayed like this multi-purpose route, and a very few are still operating this way. As buses started to be built on truck chassis and later on purpose-built bus chassis, this type of routes needed a vehicle with the characteristics of a bruck. The first ones had open air cargo compartments for easy loading and unloading. Later some of them got canvas roof, some got wooden cargo boxes, and again some got the cargo compartment integrated into the bus body. As demands for cargo and passenter transport varied, some buses would have only a small cargo compartment, while others were more or less built as a crew-cab truck offering only a few passenger seats. From the early 1980s, cantilever tail lifts have become standard equipment on brucks, making loading and unloading a one-man operation. From the 1990s the cargo compartments have gradually become more boxy and taller than the rest of the bus for maximum capacity.

In general, most brucks have been front- or mid-engined to make best possible use of the cargo space in the rear end, and to make loading height as low as possible, in addition to a better weight distribution. In the Nordic countries front-engined chassis from Volvo and Scania were the most common, while many were built on Mercedes-Benz and DAF chassis too. When the front-engined chassis models disappeared from the European market in the early 1980s, mid-engined chassis from Volvo and DAF became the usual choice. A few were also built on rear-engined chassis from Scania, including some 4.2 metres tall doubledeckers in Sweden being bodied by Helmark Carosseri and Van Hool. DAF stopped making mid-engined chassis in the mid 1990s, so from then on brucks were almost exclusively built on Volvo chassis. With bus manufacturers taking over manufacturing of both chassis and body, the Volvo 9700 became the most common bruck model in the 2000s. Since Volvo also stopped making mid-engined chassis in late 2009, there have been far less brucks built than before. Only around 40 rear-engined brucks have been delivered to Sweden since then. As of March 2015, the last known brucks were delivered to Swedish operator Bergvalls Busstrafik in June 2014.

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Wikipedia