Mack Trucks is an American icon.
The 118-year-old company manufactured dump trucks and railway cars in the 1900s, supplied thousands of military vehicles for the Allies during both World Wars and produced trucks that helped construct the Empire State Building, Hoover Dam and other celebrated structures.
At Allentown’s Mack Trucks Historical Museum, visitors get an in-depth look at how the company’s wheels of progress have turned over the years. The company, once headquartered in Allentown, manufacturers all its trucks at its 2,400-worker Lower Macungie plant.
Tour guides take you through areas housing historical photos, memorabilia, timelines and a rotating display of nearly two dozen Mack truck models — from a 1905 open-air bus with brass headlamps, cloth roofing and seven rows of seating to a 2006 Mack Granite military truck that portrayed Megatron in the blockbuster movie “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”
The facility’s secluded location, tucked away behind Queen City Airport, makes it one of the Lehigh Valley’s biggest hidden gems.
Here is an account of a recent tour that I enjoyed at the museum. Admission is free, but donations are welcome to help support the museum, a nonprofit corporation.
Hallway Gallery
The hour-long tour, led by retired engineer Mike Kohler, starts in the Hallway Gallery, which houses a timeline of notable Mack accomplishments and Mack memorabilia such as instruction manuals and miniature Mack models.
Mack Truck’s origins date to 1890 when John “Jack” Mack took a job at a carriage and wagon firm in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Mack, one of nine siblings raised on a farm in Mount Cobb, Lackawanna County, teamed up with his brother, Augustus “Gus” Mack, to purchase the carriage and wagon company in 1893.
Three more brothers joined the operation in later years.
“So, in the mid-1890s, the brothers decide to motorize one of their carriages,” Kohler says. “They tried a steam engine, which was a failure. They built an electric version, which got them across the street and back, but not much farther. Then, they tried gasoline, and just like that, it took off.”
The brothers opened their first bus manufacturing plant in 1900, with their first successful vehicle being a 40-horsepower, 20-passenger bus. The bus operated in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for eight years, racking up a million miles of service.
With business booming, the brothers in 1905 decided to transfer machinery and skilled labor to a larger space — an abandoned foundry on the Little Lehigh Creek on 10th Street in south Allentown.
It’s in Allentown where the brothers built their first trucks — 1.5- to 2-ton delivery vehicles and a 5-ton model that could haul heavy commodities such as coal. They also changed the business’s name from Mack Brothers Co. to Mack Brothers Motor Car Co.
“One thing Jack Mack really pushed was the vehicles have to be strong, durable and tough,” Kohler says. “They also had to be built to customers’ specifications.”
Jack Mack’s philosophy holds true today, Kohler adds, with Mack continuing to build trucks “the way customers want them.”
Other highlights of Mack’s early years included 51 vehicles, mostly buses, manufactured during Mack’s first year in Allentown (compare that to the 4,591 trucks Mack delivered in North America in the first quarter of 2018); and Mack’s first fire trucks being built in the early 1910s.
One fact I found particularly interesting was that the brothers decided to sell the company after a financial panic in U.S. markets in 1911. The new owners continued operation as the International Motor Co. — a holding company for the Mack Brothers Motor Car Co.
“By 1912, there were no Mack brothers left at Mack,” Kohler says. “A lot of people don’t know this.”
During World War I, Mack delivered about 4,500 AC models to the U.S. government.
It also sent more than 2,000 of those same vehicles to Great Britain, where the company’s famous bulldog mascot was born.
“The English soldiers, or the Tommies as they were called, loved the AC models so much and called on them for any tough tasks like pulling out other trucks stuck in mud,” Kohler explains. “They eventually started calling them Mack Bulldogs, not just because they were tough but also because they actually looked like English bulldogs from the front. They had blunt-nosed hoods.”
Reaching the middle of the hallway, Kohler points out prominent company developments from the rest of the 20th century, including the company winning more than 270 patents for innovations in the 1920s; enduring a sales plunge of more than 75 percent during the Great Depression; and supplying the Allies with more than 35,000 vehicles and employing an increasing number of women as part of its peak workforce of 4,800 during World War II.
The 1960s brought new Mack plants in Maryland, California, Australia and Canada.
“The Australian plant is still running today, and we still assemble our engines and transmissions in Hagerstown, Maryland,” Kohler says.
In 1970, Mack Trucks World Headquarters opened on Allentown’s Mack Boulevard, where it stayed until 2009, when the company moved its headquarters to Greensboro, N.C.
Before heading into the museum’s Main Gallery, Kohler reviews some of Mack’s popular models, including the B series (1953-1966), with stylish rounded fenders; F series (1962), Mack’s first cab-over-engine truck; R series (1965), with a roomier cab and larger windshield; Cruise-Liner (1974-1983), a premium cab-over with a riveted aluminum cab; and Super-Liner (1977-1993), designed for heavy hauling with a 450-horsepower engine.
Main Gallery
The Main Gallery is the tour’s main attraction, housing about a dozen vehicles, some owned by Mack and others on loan from collectors.
Kohler notes there are two basic models of trucks: conventionals that have a hood poking out in the front, and cab-overs with a flat front where the driver is riding on top of the engine.
“In the 1960s and ’70s, we see a lot of cab-overs on the highways in the United States,” Kohler says. “They kind of died in the 1980s.”
One of the first vehicles we check out is a green 1935 BM model, one of the firsts trucks with a sleeper cab, which is much smaller — at about 16 inches wide — than modern sleeper cabs.
“New sleeper cabs are like campers,” Kohler says. “They have microwaves, refrigerators, TVs and so on.”
Next to the BM is a truck that movie buffs might recognize: a black 1978 Model R767ST, modified to look like the truck that “Rubber Duck” (played by actor Kris Kristofferson) drove in the 1978 action film “Convoy.”
“All of use here liked ‘Convoy’ a lot better than ‘Smokey and the Bandit,’ which was full of Kenworths,” Kohler says, joking.
One of the room’s corners houses an abundance of Mack memorabilia, including bulldogs galore — from stuffed and wooden bulldogs to a candle in the shape of a bulldog. There is even an old Mack truck ride-on toy for children.
“People typically find this stuff in their attics and basements and donate it to us,” Kohler says.
A main attraction of the museum is an orange 1984 DM886SX truck trailer, which was used by Bethlehem Steel.
The truck, one of fewer than 2,000 built between 1974 and 1987, has a cab that is offset to its left side, offering better visibility for the driver.
“This was a real find,” says Kohler, noting DM stood for dumper/mixer. “It combines Mack and Bethlehem Steel, two of the most famous companies of the Lehigh Valley.”
Two fire trucks are on display: a 1939 505S and a 1974 CF, originally owned by Lower Macungie Fire Department.
Other Main Gallery highlights include a brown 2001 CH612, one of Mack’s first natural gas highway tractors used by UPS for 10 years, and a green 1923 AB, which has hand-crank starting.
Sound Room
The tour concludes in the Sound Room, where vehicles’ noise levels were once tested o make them as quiet as possible for drivers.
With floor-to-ceiling fiberglass wedges, designed to absorb sounds, it is one of the most visually unique rooms I’ve ever seen.
Around the perimeter are four trucks, including a gray 1927 AC, with road speed of 20-26 mph, and the hulking 2006 green Granite, with front spikes and chains, from the third installment of the “Transformers” movies.
A 1945 NM8D 7594 6-ton military truck, designed to carry troops, never saw combat. “The war ended right before this truck was made, but thousands of trucks just like this were shipped overseas,” Kohler says.
Another timeline relates what was going on at Mack with memorable moments in politics, pop culture and sports. Buttons play sounds from each decade, including clips of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963) and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (1984).
