Looking at buying a Mack

Get a Pinnacle, they are holding together well. the Anthems are falling apart in our fleet.

 

My good friend bought a Anthem last year from RDO in Omaha. So far it’s been doing well. He has about 140k on it now other than teething issues. Little nit pick crap. It’s been a good truck. Getting on average 7.6 last 3 quarters on IFTA. 500 hp and 1850 TQ.

He paid 155k that included a new carrier apu. No nanny crap or hood mirrors.

 

Yes, automated is what I meant... mine had the “performance” button, which I believe that package was an option but I don’t remember what they called that shifter package. But the performance button, you could push that and that would make it stay in each gear longer, so you could accelerate way faster, also worked good for climbing hills. If you were empty or light you could hit that button and the truck would take off from a stop just like a car. I got a lot of weird looks from four wheelers when I would smoke them at stop lights (not that I ever did that). It also worked the same way with downshifting. There was another mode you could activate for the jake brake that would make it downshift earlier than normal, which of course would rev the engine higher but it would give you a little extra jake power when needed. The downside is these performance modes would take a toll on your mpg’s because of the higher revs.

Like I said, I am not a fan of automated transmissions in big trucks, but that Mack I drove was actually pretty sweet. It does seem like you have to punch that shift pad a lot, hitting the right button at the right time, to get the best performance, but I got pretty good at it after awhile. I have driven a handful of other automated trucks and the Mack just blew all of them right out of the water.

As for mpg’s, I can’t really give you a good answer. I never calculated the actual number but it probably wasn’t good the way I drove it. For one thing, I was a local driver, and I drove it pretty hard (I hit that performance button a lot, lol). Also, mine was deleted so not sure how that would affect fuel mileage.