What happened to Mack?

I'm not a big fan of Mack's OTR trucks, but it is the best Mack has made to date. Give me KW any day. I do a bunch about Mack, my wife is an engineer for Mack, she helps design and update the engine.

 

I like my pet truck in our fleet, a CH600 daycab with an AC355/380. Takes me 3 miles to get up to 65, but everything works and it rides better and rattles way less than the clapped out Columbias that are the majority. There are a few Vision daycabs and small sleepers too, and they're nice too, great headlights and relatively quiet in-cab.

One minor quibble/question for the Mack aficionados, though... Why the tendency for low hp ratings, 9 gears and no jakes? Seems like most Macks I come across are either 427/460 with 18spd, 355/380 with 9/10 spd, and 300 with 5/7 spd?! And jakes aren't that common, at least in the ones I see for sale in the northeast.

 

the 300hp with 5,6,7,&8spd. are maxidyne rating meaning 1430lb of torque at 1050rpms, you do not need alot of gears with that wide of power band, and those all have very low 1st gears, 355/380 are maxi cruise speced for fleets for fuel mileage they are uprateable, but performance injectors makes the most diffrence 460E needs 13-18spd they have no torque curve at all 427 will out perform a 460E but not a 460P (487hp) Jakes on the older Macks are not common but some have them all of the late models I have been have them you have to rember most Macks were order out by a large company either contruction, refuse, oil, and not a owner operator I think the Rawhide is the best looking conv. since the Superliner

 

you might want to open you eyes and look next time, Key oil, Waste Management. Allied Waste, every County road Maintance in the south runs Macks, ADM, Casey's General Stores. Just A few off the top of my head

 

the ones I know that are slow for a reason 5.73-6.34 gears but I have mine geared for 95mph

 

I have 480,000 miles on the assigned Mack Vision I have . They are popular with tanker fleets . Slow ? Mine is governed to meet the Ontario 105 km/h requirement but before that it easily ran 70+ m.p.h. . I still pass plenty of Swift and Schneider . Tyson runs Macks . CVS drug store chain runs Ryder Macks The one I run is a 2005 . I'll take it over a Freightliner any day . The later Macks are pretty good 2003 -2004 weren't so good . There's a couple of pictures of my truck in the album at my profile .