Updated August 17, 2021 as part of Overdrive's ongoing 2021 60th-anniversary series of lookbacks at trucking history and culture through six decades of the magazine's existence. Trucking radio legend Bill Mack's passing in August of 2020 marked a significant moment in the history of that culture. The radio legend was promptly memorialized by readers, and then Editorial Director Max Heine, as follows.
Texas-headquartered trucking-radio legend Bill Mack‘s prominence in the trucking community for decades, from the 1970s on, perhaps can't be overstated. Yet reader Maria Arnold, commenting under Overdrive Editorial Director Max Heine’s remembrance of the broadcaster last year upon his passing, lamented the increasingly short memories of many in our go-go-go culture. “Only the old-school know who he is,” Arnold said.
As if in pre-emptive answer, so posted William C. Karcher: “Never heard of him.”
But the memories were much more prevalent in reader responses, and they underscore what Mack, who passed at 91 years old, meant for many truckers.
“Listened to him for a lot of years,” noted Warren Garman.
“Kept me awake many nights,” said Richard Wilkerson, responding to Mack’s passing via Overdrive’s Facebook page.
Charles Cameron, commenting under Heine’s story here on Overdrive (and also included below), shared his experience of Mack’s unique ability to put the mind at ease in the face of what might otherwise be this or that anxiety-inducing scenario on the road. “I was listening to this man when I made my very first all-night run,” Cameron wrote. “I was 19 and going to California with chemicals from Texas and, I ain’t gonna lie, I was as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof but by two in the morning. With Mack talking to me through the speakers, I felt like an old pro.”
