Mack Trucks' big new-model reveal is scheduled for tomorrow:
Though he couldn't reveal a lot about the truck, one man who's gotten a look at it, Hell Bent Xpress owner and 2024 Overdrive Small Fleet Champ finalist Jamie Hagen, could say a bit about it. "Here’s a truck that when you see it, it’s more aerodynamic” than you think, he told me a couple weeks ago when we also talked about the auxiliary A/C he's installed in one of Hell Bent's Anthems. “It looks very aggressive, very industrial. Like when you see it you think 'Mack' instantly. 'This is an aggressive truck.'"A self-described "aerodynamic guy" -- Hagen's famously wrung 10 mpg-plus out of his own Mack Anthem as an owner-operator -- he nonetheless still wants a truck to look like a truck should, he said. Mack's new unit's aimed to deliver the best of both worlds in his mind. “I lost my mind when I saw it," he said. "That’s what this thing looks like. It’s pretty darn aggressive.”
You might not be surprised where Hagen came down in the polling below -- we asked readers several weeks back to name their own favorite among Mack models throughout history. Here's how the choices shook out.
Perhaps the very most aggressive of all the Mack models took the largest share of the vote. Trucker Tim Stine noted formative memories of his dad's Super-Liner growing up. "I remember hearing that V8 when he was getting close to home and riding my bike up the street" to "jump in for a ride back home," he said.
And yes, the Super-Liner was also Hell Bent Xpress owner Hagen's choice, having grown up in the 1970s/'80s during the OTR model's heyday. "I was a big Super-Liner guy," he said. He thinks of them in terms of appearance as "kind of how you would describe a bulldog," Mack's mascot, of course. "'They’re so ugly they’re cute.' The hood is so flat. It just goes straight out, with the grille the size of a house, practically. It always just seemed to symbolize that era, the 1970s and early 1980s."
In addition to owner-operator Jerry Kissinger's 1991 Mack model in the collage at the top of this story, notable among Super-Liners featured here in Overdrive in recent years was this 1986 model, V8-powered, from owner Thomas Menges, caught at the 2023 Mid-America Trucking Show.
Coming in a close second in the voting, other R Series Macks were noted by many among poll respondents as the truck they learned how to drive in to start their careers. Rob Wilson "ran Macks back in the day," too, he said, including a variety of R models. "As a young man I went on a tour" of several Mack facilities with his local dealership owner, Ben Bruckner, Wilson added. "He was a really nice man. I knew him for many years."
Some cited the movie Convoy inspiring their choice of the R Series model in the poll. Shown in the photo collection up top is a restored RS700 actually used in that film, the rehabilitation work spearheaded back almost a decade ago by small fleet owner Anthony Fox.
In Mack Trucks' production history, the R Series picked up where the Mack B Series -- readers' third-most-common choice in the polling -- left off.
Diane Eschen, owner of the 1962 B-61 featured in the collage up top and in our Reader Rigs series in 2020, noted "Miss Marge" remains in restoration mode to this day along with a 22-foot 1948 Fruehauf trailer. She "does make trips to various truck shows," Eschen said, with the "190 Thermodyne engine, duplex tranny. Husband and nephew have been doing the restorations. Miss Marge has a little bit of this and a little bit of that."
Another memorable B Series restoration, of a 1960 model, brought a little bit of a whole lot, and was featured in this 2021 story about the work.
Mike Flake built the one-of-a-kind 1960 Mack B75 over the course of two-and-a-half years. He believes from his research it is the only or one of very few B-model Macks with a stretched hood in the United States.
"My first truck was a 1965 B-75 Mack," noted Russ Wright about his choice of the B Series in the polling. Simply put, he added, "I wish I had never sold it."
The company's history stretches farther back than pretty well every current Overdrive reader's memory, of course. Next week at the New York International Auto Show, April 18-27, at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, Mack and the New York Auto Show together commemorate dual 125th anniversaries, a feat not many companies or events attain.
A Mack AB tractor, the first high-volume standard production truck from the company, will feature in the Javits Center’s Crystal Palace, where the auto show will display motor vehicles that debuted during the last 125 years. As part of the media preview day April 16, Mack is hosting a press conference that will talk about pioneering technologies throughout the years, as well the flagship Mack highway Class 8 vehicle being introduced tomorrow, April 8.
The Mack AB model that will be at the auto show was built in 1925. Produced between 1914 and 1936, the Mack AB model was equipped with a 30-horsepower four-cylinder engine. Eventually, the engine’s horsepower was increased to a grand total of 60.Mack Trucks
Keep tuned tomorrow, April 8, for reporting from Mack's new model reveal in Brooklyn, New York, where the company was founded.
[Related: Can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch: Junior Elmore's 1984 Mack Super-Liner]
