GearheadGrrrl

I agree with Mack Man. It's probably possible to option a Vision up to $130,000, but you can get a decent one for under $100,000. 67 mph is plenty fast- anything above 65 and the fuel mileage goes to heck and tires start throwing treads in the summer. 3.6 mpg is way low though, and combined with having to prime the fuel system suggests a fuel leak... take a look under your truck! Stick with it and get the bugs worked out- you've just bought the best truck on the road!

I'd prefer the Mack 12 speed too- the splits on the Eaton "Super 10" are too wide too skipshift so you end up splitting every gear. The 12 speed splitter box with a Maxidyne is a great combination- you can skipshift with just the main box in traffic, then use the splitter to keep the engine in it's sweet spot out on the highway as well as keep it wound up for engine braking on the downhills. Back in the 70s I drove a Freightliner with the Spicer 10 speed (5 speed with splitter)- it was a sweet combination- the 55% split in the main box kept the 290 horse 8V-71 in the 1300-2100 RPM powerband so you could start in 2nd low, then proced through 3L, 4L. 5L, then split to 5 high. "Twas almost as good as a Maxidyne... I spent 14 years dreaming of Macks while driving those Freightshakers before I started working for a fleet with Macks!

Bill, when I saw the 5000 pound rating it sounded like your truck was a compact pickup lile a Ranger or S-10- a full size pickup should have no problem grossing 6000 pounds. Heck, some of them these days weight damn near that much empty!

The 5000 pound GVW rating is probably the manufacturer's rating for what your pickup is really capable of. The 6500 pound figure is probably the minimum the state licences for, and doesn't mean your pickup can carry that. The weight capacity of a vehicle is always the lowest of manufacturers rating, licenced weight, etc. Don't make the mistake a friend of mine did after having a 10,000 pound rated hitch installed on her Explorer- she tried towing a nearly 10,000 pound trailer and blew out the transmission! Her explorer was rated for only 3500 pounds towing, and the transmission rebuild set her back over $2000.

Converted road tractors make cheap dunp trucks... Problem is they generally don't have the 44k rears and at least 14k fronts a dump truck needs to get a decent payload. The air ride suspension doesn't give the articulation a Mack bogie does, and a 9 or 10 speed gearboxes doesn't have the deep low gears needed for pulling through deep mud and up 30% ramps. That said, a converted road tractor will work fine for someone like a landscaping contractor that doesn't need to haul maximum payload and drives mostly onpaved streets.

The VIN plate indiactes that this was built as a tractor and the dump body was probably added later. The 5 speed Maxidyne/Maxitorque combo was built to start 80,000 pounds or so on an 8% or so highway grade, so running at 50,000 pounds or so as a straight turck it should be able to handle a bit more. If you need a lower granny gear the 6 speed low hole Maxitorque could be swapped in.

You might want to hang on to those old R models for a while- there a lot lighter than the new models. The CX and CN tandem drive models weigh around 14,400 pounds dry, IIRc the R model Western tandem with aluminum frame weighed just under 12,000 pounds.

Continental Baking bought a couple hundred F model Mack Westerns in the mid 60s with 8V-71s, probably a few still around. Back around 1980 I remember seeing at least a dozen new Cruiseliner (W series) cabovers at the Oklahoma City Mack dealer. They had Detroit 6V-92T power with tandem axles and a heavy front axle with super singles on the front. They were in Haliburton colors so I suspect they were going to be fitted out with oil field service bodies. Back about '96 I saw similar trucks out the window of the Empire Builder as we passed Haliburton's Williston, North Dakota yard. Was out there last summer on the motorcycle and found the yard nearly empty, only Haliburton vehicles I saw were SUVs with guys in white shirts driving...

I note the placarding and what looks like a pump on the right side- is this a straight (fuel?) truck or a tractor?

There's a reason why Mack only offered the Maxidyne engine with the Maxitorque transmission... The old single countershaft transmissions couldn't handle the torque!

You might want to consider the B models cooling capacity- in it's day these trucks only had to have a big enough radiator to cool a 250-300 horse engine.

Last night I took one of my occasional glances at the official Mack website, macktrucks.com. It was nice to see some new pages up describing the new MP7 engine, and even better to see that this new engine is slightly lighter than the legendary E7 while the power curves are even flatter. Then I looked at the "products" section and noticed a gaping hole- the links to the info on the RB and DM have disappeared. In fact, any mention of those models have disappeared, though their is some listing of maybe 20 or so new RDs and RBs in dealer stock in the "search for trucks" area of the website. It appears that an era has ended...

From the pictures I saw on trainorders.com it looked like the RD800 may have pushed and pulled at different spots on the route. That's not unusual in heavy haulage, where sometimes multiple trucks are used to push and/or pull the load. I suspect that the wheel loader was used for pushing also. BTW, that RD800 with a high rail conversion would make one heck of a street legal switching locomotive...

An excellent example of why Mack should have never discontinued the 800 series heavy haulers! I followed the reports of these moves at trainorders.com. Though the moves were only a few miles they took all weekend, expecially when a trailer bogie broke while crossing some rough railroad tracks. Besides the Big Boy they also moved one of the last remaining examples of the largest diesel locomotive ever built, the UP Centennial. This was essentially two GP40s on one very long frame, with two 16 cylinder diesel engines and two four axle bogies. Both locomotives are now on display at UPs museum.

Thanks guys for filling in some of the holes in my collecting of the history of Continental Baking (CBC). CBC apparently was forced into starting a big tractor trailer trucking fleet as the railroads discontinued passenger trains that had carried Wonder Bread and Hostess Cake in the baggage and mail cars. Interestingly, the height and width of a standard one pound oaf of bread may be about the same height and width as a standard postal envelope so bread could be mailed. At the old Minneapolis bakery we had boxes that we used when we shipped bread or cake by private carrier to the Dakotas, those boxes were the same size as a Postal Service letter tray. This confirms some of the oldtimers stories of shipping bread and cake on passenger trains. Also, like the old Post Offices, many of the bakeries were located right next to the railroad depots. As for the GMCs, they may have come from a contract carrier that served CBC in the midwest and northeast out of a small town on I-55 south of Chicago. CBC eventually bought them out and they became part of the CBC fleet. Even into the 1990s CBC drivers out of Chicago were allowed to take their truucks home with them while deadheading home if they lived along their route- I suspect this priviledge was provided by union contract or past practice so the drivers from the newly acquired contract carrier wouldn't have to make the long commute to the Chicago bakeries from rural northeastern Illinois. By the time I started at CBC in 1978 all the crakerboxes were gone, and we had but one GMC Astro at the Rochester bakery, bought to replace a totalled out Freightliner when it was the only thing they could find in stock. I don't remember any White 3000s, but I've seen pictures of them in CBC dress. We had a couple White Compact 1500 cabover straight trucks, one with a 6V-53 and the other a 4-71. The 4-71 didn't have quite as much power as the screaming 6V-53, but was a much more relaxed highway cruiser. White disavowed any knowledge of the 4-71 though, and it was ultimately scrapped when the clutch went and a replacement could not be found around 1990. The one with the 6v-53 I last saw around 2000 when some immigrant storekeepers had bought it to haul their own bread. They had a whole rack of bread half sticking out the sidedoor, so I stopped and showed them how the cargo restraints worked before they dropped a load on top of someone's car. Not bad longevity for a truck built in the 1970s...

We will probably soon again see a 16 litre engine in a Mack... But It'll be a Volvo 6. It's costing Volvo a fortune to build that small volume 16 litre 6 that shares almost nothing with the new 12/13 litre 6. It would have been much more cost effective to build a 16 litre V8 sharing the 12 litre's parts and development costs. Given that 16 litre 6s tend to be long, tall, and heavy beasts a V8 of similar size would be a lot easier to fit under the hood or cab too, as well as providing a bit more payload.

I never saw a crackerbox GMC in Continetal Baking's fleet, but there may have been some somewhere. Just before I started in 1978 at the Minneapolis bakery they sold off the last of the fibreglass White 5000s- these also outlasted the Freightliners being 15 years old by then while the Freightliners generally lasted only 10. The 220 cummins was a pig of an engine though, not tolerating lugging well. Then again, there may have been some crackerboxes on a sleeperteam run hauling twinkies, pies, and other Hostess Cake products along I 90 between Chicago and Boston- I recall talking to a bakery driver in one a few years before I went to work for the company. Sadly, the once great Continental Baking fleet is now a mess- First they were bought by Ralston Purina in the '80s who gave us KW anteaters and cheapie Freightliners with the Mercedes light van cab, all powered by the gutless L10 Cummins. Then in the '90s they merged with Interstate Baking which had a motly fleet of just about any truck that was cheap. The company is now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the way there going will probably end up going Chapter 7 liquidation.

MRs are damn hard to kill- in my 12 years at the Postal Service I have yet to see one totalled. There was even one that lost it's brakes in Kansas City, ran right through a brick apartment building- the trailer broke in two but the cab was still intact! As for Freightliners, when I worked for Continental Baking our standard tractor was a non sleeper cabover with a Detroit 2 stroke and center point steering. They weren't a bad truck to drive, but the cabs were rattling apart before a million miles. Back in the mid 60s Continental Baking bought a hundred Mack Western FL cabovers though- the Waterloo bakery still had one running into the 1980s and I've heard a few were still running out of the Dallas bakery into the 1990s and probably had two million miles on by then.

The air throttle is a good thing and I'd try to keep it if at all possible. I believe they were made by Williams Controls, who are still in business- have you tried them for parts?

I've driven Post Office MRs with 700,000 city miles and more recently UPS CHs with over a million miles. All ran almost as good as new, and I have yet to see rust on a galvanized R or CH cab. These new Macks are going to be around for a long time! BTW, the clutch on the mid 90s CHs I'ved driven seemed really high effort compared to the older Rs and MCs I've driven- am I getting older or are these clutches getting tougher than the old ones? I also ran a couple Visions around the hub a few days ago and the clutch seemed easier- perhaps Mack has noted this problem and partially fixed it? I'm still looking forward to trying the newest Macks with the air assisted clutch. One down side of the Vision was the Eaton Fuller transmission- amazing how driving a "Roadranger" reminds you of how much better the Mack box is. It seems that Eaton has given their 'box a postage stamp sized gate in hopes of making the thing feel like a car transmission. The result is an imprecise (what gear am I in?) high effort gear griding experience. In contrast the Maxitorque still feals like a truck tranny, with a wide gate and reasonable effort that make shifting easy.

The R models had a lot of detail changes over the years, and in some ways you want a later model to get as many of these upgrades as possible. Examples of these upgrades were the switch to galvanized steel in the late '80s that pretty much solved the rust problems and the small bulge put in the back of the cab to give a bit more legroom in the '80s. Some changes may or not be upgrades depending on your needs, like the electronic controls and anti lock brakes on later models. And some of the changes were just plain dumb, like that ugly hood on the last decade or so of RD production.

One has to remember the economic realities of truck building though- the market is increasingly price competitive like the car market, and you need at least 200,000 units a year of a model in that business to be profitable. IIRC, Mack has never sold anywhere near 100,000 trucks a year, and that volume has traditionally been split between several models. Only by sharing a lot of basic parts like engine blocks, cabs, etc. can Volvo get near the 6 figure annual volumes needed to be competitive. Thusly we can assume that Mack and Volvo will share engines for years to come, the next generation Volvo cabs will be shared with Mack, and we may see Maxitorque transmissions as an option on Volvo trucks. Keep in mind that this isn't really anything new- legend has it that the MR cab was originally designed for Diamond Reo and is reputedly built by a tractor cab manufacturer in the Quad Cities, the chassis and most of the axles on most CHs were built by Dana Spicer, the MH cab was built by the same vendor that did White's fiberglass cab, and the N model shared a Budd built cab with the Ford C series. Then note that the B model cab bears a susupicious resemblence to a contemporary Reo cab, and who built the early Mack pickups?

I've always been impressed by the range of Macks offered in Australia too, and saddened that the much bigger market in the U.S hasn't been give so many options. I think some of the limited model range is the result of Renault's attempt to turn Mack into a commodity product, trying to push buyers into an CH conventional with outsourced cab, frame, axles, transmission, etc.... It got so bad that about the only Mack part on those "Macks" was the engine. Fortunately Volvo seems to have some inkling of why Mack buyers buy Macks, and has kept the Mack axles, bogies, and transmissions in production. However, IMHO dropping the 800 series and all wheel drive models was a mistake, ceding this profitable market to Western Star without a fight. In view of Macks history of building locomotives, it is especially depressing to see that Mack has no competitor for Western Star's "Hi-Rail" railway maintainence truck. But as long as my Volvo stock keeps appreciating I won't complain too much.

They have said what it weighs yet, but with over 400 horsepower in Maxidyne tune the 13 liter sounds like a winner. Wonder if I could order one in an RB conventional?... Mack's webpage still lists that model. Heck,I'd even tolerate that big Granite cab to get a 400+ horse Maxidayne and put those Cats, Cummins, and Detroits in their place!

Given the small volumes in class 8 truck production it makes economic sense for Volvo and Mack to share basic engine castings. However, it makes no sense to have 11, 12, and 16 litre engines each with their own parts when they could have developed a "modular" 2 litre/cylinder engine. That would have given them a 10 liter 5, 12 litre 6, and a glorious 16 liter V8!