Superior Transportation’s Mack Pinnacle Model by Fran Matso Lysiak/Transport Topics
CHARLESTON, S.C. — As one part of its integrated powertrain strategy, Mack Trucks’ line of automated manual transmissions is seeing increasing adoption in the market, said executives with the heavy-duty truck maker.
When Mack Trucks starting building trucks in 1907, it had “a completely proprietary powertrain and it took about 85 or 90 years for everybody else to catch up,” said Jonathan Randall, senior vice president of sales for Mack Trucks. “Now you see the rest of the industry kind of moving in the same direction with proprietary powertrains and drivetrains.”
Mack Trucks was “really the original disruptors of the commercial industry because we were the first ones to have a fully proprietary drivetrain,” Randall said, but noting that’s a bit tongue-in-cheek.
He spoke with TT during the truck maker’s “Born to Haul” press event May 18 that included a tour of the Port of Charleston. Mack, one of North America’s largest manufacturers of heavy-duty Class 8 trucks, engines and transmissions, is part of the Sweden-based Volvo Group.
Roy Horton, director of product strategy, said that for Mack Trucks, an integrated powertrain is the engine, transmission, driveline and rear axles, as well as the exhaust aftertreatment system. “It’s the configuration of those main components and how we optimize the performance and tailor the trucks for each of our customers’ applications,” Horton said.
As for its automated manual transmissions, Horton said the mDrive and mDrive HD have been a success “out of the gate.” The adoption rate year-over-year has increased in each model it has been offered in, he said, noting Mack Trucks has offered the mDrive in its highway model since 2010, and started offering it in its Granite vocational model in 2015.
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