Mack Seeks to Increase Sales of Over-the-Road Class 8 Trucks

This story appears in the Nov. 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa. — Mack Trucks’ leadership rallied the company’s sales force here, urging dealers to sell more Pinnacle highway tractors in addition to the traditional vocational offerings. The formula for success, the leaders said, would be new ClearTech SCR engines, M-Drive transmissions and a “Made in the USA” appeal to economic patriotism.

Concurrent with the original equipment manufacturer’s first world sales conference in five years, Mack opened a customer center with a three-quarter-mile test track, a product showroom, a museum and a vehicle-modification and training facility in Allentown, not far from the OEM’s main production facility in Macungie.

“We’ve used the last two or three years as an opportunity to drain the swamp and fix what was wrong,” said Dennis Slagle, CEO of Volvo AB’s North American truck operations, which includes Mack. “We’re now in a better position than we’ve been in over the last 10 years,” he said of the company’s operations and prospects.

Slagle said Mack’s third-quarter orders for new Class 8 trucks were 84% above the same three months last year and 40% more than the company took in during the second quarter this year. He said requests from small- and medium-size fleets, both truckload and less-than-truckload, have dominated the OEM’s order boards. Slagle said he is not expecting a significant increase in dump truck and cement mixer orders until next year at the earliest.

Mack played company videos for dealers and reporters featuring product endorsements from customers, including LTL carrier Southeastern Freight Lines, No. 29 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers, and Tyson Foods, No. 6 on the private TT 100 list.

“Mack nailed it; they absolutely got it right,” Jack McDevitt, a New Hampshire-based Mack and Volvo dealer, said of Mack’s products and plans.

McDevitt, who represents Mack dealers on the American Truck Dealers board of directors, said the past few years have been depressing for truck dealers in general and Mack dealers specifically because of the company’s strong links to the beleaguered housing and construction industries.

“As the vocations go, so goes Mack,” McDevitt said, recounting a sales adage. He also said he thinks Mack dealers will be able to make inroads, particularly in regional-haul applications, with the company’s Pinnacle line of highway tractors.

“We used to dominate in regional and bulk haul in the 1970s and ’80s, and with the products we’ve got now, it’s a perfect setup,” McDevitt said, referring to selective catalytic reduction engines and the M-Drive transmissions.

Mack, like all other Class 8 OEMs except Navistar Inc., uses SCR to meet 2010 federal emissions requirements.

At the Macungie plant, Mack managers displayed a day cab freshly manufactured for the parcel delivery operations of UPS Inc., and the company also has been selling trucks to Chrysler Group for its private fleet.

As a brand, Mack and its sister company, Volvo Trucks North America, usually take fifth and sixth place in the monthly totals of Class 8 U.S. retail truck sales reported by WardsAuto.com. On a corporate basis, Volvo is usually in fourth place behind Daimler Trucks North America, Navistar and Paccar Inc.

In an interview at the test track in Allentown, though, Slagle said he thinks Mack can capitalize on recent changes in the market.

“There’s an opening out there because Caterpillar has left the engine market and Navistar has a highly doubted solution with massive EGR [exhaust gas recirculation]. So I think there’s an opportunity for us,” said Slagle, adding that he is “absolutely certain” Mack can sell sleeper cabs and other highway vehicles in addition to dump trucks and mixers.

Mack has a 7.8% market share of the U.S. Class 8 market at the three-quarter point of this year, according to the Ward’s data. That position represents a dip from 8% for all of last year. Slagle said he wants to increase that toward 10% and then up to 11%.

Volvo Group bought Mack, along with the rest of Renault V.I., at the end of 2000. Slagle said integration of the acquisition was more difficult than originally anticipated because it coincided with a decade that included three changes in federal emissions standards, which in turn generated roller-coaster boom-and-bust cycles for truck sales. Having plowed through all of that and looking forward to an improving economy, albeit slowly, Slagle said he is more optimistic.

Company engineers and managers spoke of the M-Drive transmission’s 12 forward speeds and two for reverse with 1,920 pound-feet of torque. They said that, over the past 15 years, the Macungie plant has sliced in half the time to build a heavy-duty truck. However, executives also offered a patriotic appeal.

“At Mack, we export trucks, not jobs,” said Senior Vice President Kevin Flaherty, taking a jab at Daimler and Navistar, which do a lot of manufacturing in Mexico. Although Mack does serve foreign markets with plants in Australia and Venezuela, all of the North American sales come out of Macungie.

“We are committed to building in the USA,” Slagle said. “I want us to make things as a nation. I don’t want my grandchildren serving up french fries,” He added, however: “Don’t buy us just because we’re built in America, but buy us because we build the best trucks.”