In terms of why Freightliners seem to be the industry standard fleet truck, that in my opinion goes back to the early 21st century. In the year 2000, international was the most common brand of fleet truck and Freightliners were the red headed step child of truck brands. But then something happened - EPA2007 mandates.

In order to meet the emissions requirements, engine manufacturers had to come up with some way of reducing pollutants in exhaust but the mechanism so to do wasn't prescribed by the regulation, only the target outcome. Most manufacturers opted for filters that use diesel exhaust fluid to capture and bond with pollutants but this affected engine performance and added the additional operating cost of DEF.

International/Navistar had a different idea. They wanted to use an exhaust recirculating type system to re-burn pollutants out of the exhaust. This would avoid adding operating cost to the truck and (in theory at least) it wouldn't have the performance loss. They called it MaxxForce and I think everyone in the industry knows how that turned out. They made a number of excuses for it but in the end they discontinued the engine line because it became apparent that they could never re-burn enough exhaust cases to hit the EPA target reduction PLUS there was a further standard revision in 2013. Drivers hated the low-powered engines and fleets sued International over the false claims and losses suffered from fleets of inoperative trucks.

So during all that drama for International, Freightliner and Volvo gradually gobbled up market share ceded by International's epic miscalculation. Volvo actually had a lot of advancement ahead of Freightliner like their automatic transmission trucks but I think the biggest reason Freightliner pulled out in front is because of their service network - fleets could get their shop staff certified to work on Freightliners under warranty whereas Volvos still had to go back to a dealer for warranty work. So fleets likes keeping their truck work in-house and leaned into Freightliner even if drivers preferred Volvo.

Nowadays you'll see 40% Freightliners in the truck stop, about 30% Volvos, and a fair enough amount of Internationals plus other less common OTR brands. O/Os still like their Petes and KWs but fleets rarely buy these. So if you think it, International could have been the top brand to this day if they didn't get so exotic and tarnished their own reputation plus lost a decade of momentum, because at the turn of the century they WERE the top brand. It was their lead to lose and they lost it big time.

Sounds like you got a base model Cascadia because so many of those issues are addressed with better trim levels. Companies can cheap out and don't care about their drivers' comfort or they can opt for comforts and conveniences that make a truck easy and fun to live in. It's difficult to compare brands without also noting the trim levels in order to know what's standard and what's optional.