GearheadGrrrl

That light yellow Sterling is a rare find- I've only seen a couple in my life.

A Volvo will outlast a Freightshaker, Kenworthless, or Peterbad though. A Volvo is definately good for a million highway miles, but no truck can stand up to constructioon, logging, refuse, etc. conditions like a Mack.

Mack had better come out with a replacement soon... South Dakota has eliminated their GCW limit, and trucks there only need comply with bridge "Formula B". They allow doubles up to 81 1/2 feet long including drawbar with no limit on tractor length. A 4 axle tractor pulling a 4 axle trailer, 3 axle dolly, and 4 axle trailer could thusly legally gross over 150,000 pounds. You need more than a 405 horse MP7 engine to move that kind of weight. Just to have a barely acceptable 6 horsepower/ton you'd need 450 horses, and you'd need 600 horses to meet the Euro standard of 8 hp./ton with one of these South Dakota road trains. Mack should have saved the E9 V8 for markets like South Dakota, Michigan, etc.. It's too late to brig back the V8, but Mack had better get the Volvo 16 litre engine in a Mack NOW. Sure, a South Dakota trucker could get those 16 litres and 600 horsepower in a Volvo highway tractor- but most of the South Dakota market is for construction trucks and they need a Mack chassis. The same is true of U.P. loggers- a Volvo isn't going to last long on logging roads.

Heck, here in Minnesota with the bridge formula they'd let you scale only 60,000 pouns or so with 4 axles.

The aluminum frames are usually more rot resistant- however, they are still subject to electrolytic corrosion and some of the chemicals used in concrete can rot them out. Often used truck dealers get confused with all the Mack models and mislabel them, but from the pix that appears to be an aluminum frame and it looks OK. It's possible to replace the frame in any truck, but usually more hassle than it's worth in an old truck

Chris, learn how to drive and/or fix trucks and you'll always have a job- I'm retired but still get calls offering me jobs driving!

I've had Cruise King on a couple of trucks- excellent product and service!

Your post brings back fond memories. Back in '78 I speced out 3 Cruiseliner WS786LTs and WS786LSTs. The financing fell through, so we ended up with 3 year old F795Ts and a F786ST. I drove the F795T and with the 325 horse V8 it was a gas doing local work with light loads. I later drove MH690Ts at UPS- great truck, and the finest cabover I've ever driven... and I've driven everything but the new Freightshaker Argosy.

IIRC the F model was introduced with 72" and 80" sleepers. Later a "bustle back" was added that lengthened the sleeper to 86" or so. The Cruiseliner was available with 76" and 86" or so sleepers. The MH Ultraliner had only a 90" or so sleeper option. The short sleepers were built to pull doubles on the west coast primarily so you don't see them much in the rest of tthe country.

You might want too keep the wedge brakes- we had them on some of our trucks at Continental Baking and they worked fine. Parts might be difficult to find now though.

We used to have a lot of fun with them- I know drivers who made their own tachograph charts with a toothpick! They "broke" so often that the company had the standard speedo and tach installed as well as the tachograph so the truck wouldn't be out of service half the time with a broken tachograph. Then the company tried the fancy european tachographs... And the drivers "accidentally" found that closing the door when the vehicle was in motion would break these $1000 tattletails.

A bit of experience from the Postal Service fleet... '84 MC686Ts & STs with Maxitorque 5 speeds- covered 400-500,000 city miles with most clutches and transmissions untouched. '91, '96. & 98 MRs and CHs with Econondyne 300 and Allison automatic- covered 300-700,000 city miles with most Allisons untouched. '97 Freightliner FL60s with 6 litre Cat and 6 speed manual- 200-400,000 miles, most have needed multiple clutch replacements and transmission rebuilds. '97 Freightliner FL112s with M11 Cummins and Spicer 7 speed, 300-700,000 miles, almost all have had clutch replacements, some transmissions rebuilt too. Conclusion: Both the Maxitorque and Allison are unbreakable, unlike the Fuller/Spicer/Rockwell junk.

Yes, you can rebuild the old iron forever, but then you miss out on some of the improvements in the newer models. Then again, some of the features of the newer models are dubvious "improvements". 10 years from now no one will worry anymore about particulate filters and EGR, but the next couple years are gonna be kinda rough.

Sounds like a parts truck, so at most it's worth $1000. BTW, for the cabover fans theres currently 3 Postal Service '97 MR688ST's on eBay for less than $5000. Also a 1980 vintage WS786LT Cruiseliner with a trailer, asking $2500 with no bids so far.

I doubt if you broke anything inside the clutch housing- you just adjusted out all the free play and have the clutch partially released.

I get the feeling that Volvo Truck's Swedish executives still don't undrstand the American market... They have yet to realize that Mack is a stronger brand here than Volvo. They also ignore the fact that when they bought Mack they got the strongest engineering base in American truck building, something they didn't get when they bought White and GMC.

There are currently quite a few Postal Service Macks with HT740 Allisons for sale on Truck Paper and eBay. The '92s come with a mechanical 300 horse E7 and the '97s have an electronc E7-300 horse motor. They're going quite cheap- a good way to get an automatic at a decent price.

Photoshopped? Not! This is the result of a collision a few years back on the Lackawanna Terminal Railroad. The Maintainence of Way crew was busy taking a break under a bridge and enjoying some liquid refreshment. In fact, they were enjoying said liquid refreshment so much that they completely forgot about their Mack high rail truck and they so lost track of time they forgot their Track Warrant had expired. About this time the Lackawanna Terminal's scheduled local wayfreight came along at it's roaring 10 mile per hour pace. Now the crew of the venerable locomotive should have stopped short of the crash, but it appears they were either sleeping or had been inbibing also. In fact, it was a newly hired assistant brakeman on the caboose who finally applied the brakes when he noted pieces of locomotive along the right of way. The conductor and the rest of the crew informed the new brakie that he shouldn't have awakened them from their slumber, as the sight of chucks of locomotives alngst the tracks was an unremarkable everyday event on the Lackawanna Terminal Railroad. The Lackawanna Terminal Railroad shops quickly determined that the Mack and locomotive were melded together in an inseperable manner. The crew had no complaints, the Mack being more comfortable than their locomotive cab and having more power to boot. with tongue planted firmly in cheek, GearheadGrrrl

The museum Mack switchers can be found at www.lsrm.org/Education/diesel.asp Metro Transit here in Minnesota has one of the Western Star "locomotives". It is an impressive machine, able to accellerate going upgrade while towing two Light Rail Cars. Canadian Pacific Railroad keeps one by the Hastings, Minnesota depot and rumor has it that it can pull 10 loaded hopper cars. That's over 2,000,000 pounds GCW... Sad to see that Mack has ceded this and other specialized markets to DCX.

As a railfan and Mack fanatic, I've long been curious about Mack's forrays onto the "high iron". I've seen the two little Mack switchers at Lake Superior Railroad Museum and they are impressive machines, looking quite well finished despite being handbuilt examples of which only about 20 were made. Does anyone know what these locomotives had for power, and are they diesel- electrics or do they have mechanical drivetrains? I've also heard of modern Macks with Hi-Rail conversions being used as railroad switchers in Australia. Does anyone know anything about these units? Such a road and rail capable switcher might be a viable business here in the midwestern U.S., where it would be cheaper for an elevator to hire such a truck for the occasion rail car switching rather than keep an expensive locomotive or purpose built wheeled switcher on hand...

I'd nix a 3208- It'd be an oddball with no parts available and simply not worth the bother. At 50,000 pounds you could use a bit more power though... Mack offered a turbo version of the little Scania diesel with a bit over 200 horses so you might want to look for one of those. BTW, what transmission does the truck have now?- it mght have enough capacity for a turbo Scania but a Maxidyne will almost certainly require a tranny swap. Of course, swapping in an engine and tranny in that old a truck is a lot of hassle- it might be easier to buy a running Mack with a Maxidyne and keep your old Scania engined Mack for parts.

Well, I've now hunted down over a dozen of these trucks. A handful have appeared on eBay, the high bids ranging from $2500 to a bit over $5000. A dealer/junkyard in Winger, Minnesota scooped up 10 and is asking ridiculous prices, $5000 for '93 single axle models with over 700,000 miles to $12,000 for a '96 tandem. The 96 had evidence of oil blowing out the exhaust pipe and may be the tandem the Minneapolis garage had bad ordered- Minneapolis is hanging onto most of their tandems as they made the mistake of ordering only new single axles. Meanwhile, the Des Moines Postal Service garage has posted 2 trucks themselves on eBay- perhaps they've learned from the poor results they got taking previous trucks to dealer only auctions...

Looking for suggestions on insuring a tandem axle tractor... I'm getting tempted to bid on one of the Postal Service tractors and I need insurance to get it home and such until I put it to work. Is it possible to insure it as an RV tow vehicle? Has anyone found truck insurance at low rates payable by the month? thanks in advance, GearheadGrrrl

All our MRs rode OK with a load on- unfortunately the Postal Service does a lot of bobtailing and that's where they have the problem. These tractors have air ride but it seems like the air suspension just can't compensate for the light loading on a bobtail rig- the single axles weight only 4,000 pounds on that single rear axle and probably only half of that is sprung weight. I suspect one of these tractors converted to a straight truck would ride pretty well, especially since they only have 12,000 pound front ends. They might be tough to stretch though due to the MR deep belly frame. The frame looks to be standard height (10 inches) around the rear suspension though so tag axles would be possible, but a long stretch would be iffy.

I shouldn't have spoken so quick- 3 single axle MRs just showed up on eBay. Some fool even put in an opening bid of $4500 on one! I even noted one I'd driven before, but it has 500,000 plus miles so i wouldn't give much for it.