I'm not supposed to say which of these projects I worked on, but it was one of the most fun moments of my career, seeing it move for the first time.
After weeks of wiring, adapting plans that were evolving ever so slightly even as we built the truck, bringing up pieces so the software and integration team could do their part, crawling all over every inch of that monster frame, I knew what to expect. I knew it would be nearly silent, just a faint whine from the motor-axle. And I knew it would work, because we'd spun the wheels with the axles jacked in the air, to get all the encoders configured.
But it still took my breath away.
Because, you see, the whole rest of the prototype garage was still full of diesel trucks. They'd roar to life and rattle in and out, doing whatever their research programs were doing. I didn't have much insight into that, but I got accustomed to associating that racket with every moving truck. No matter what acoustic strides get made in passenger-car diesels, heavy-duty trucks never seem to get quieter. And after a few weeks in the garage, I was as used to it as anyone.
So when we finally lowered the jacks and moved the work tables out of the way, and it was time for the truck to move, part of my reflexes just knew that noise would accompany it. Even as I'd just spent hundreds of hours making sure the opposite was true, it nevertheless came as a shock. Seeing something that big just glide across the building with nary a hiss, I couldn't help but feel something serious had just changed.