The Associated Press
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ALLENTOWN - Mack Trucks Inc. is accomplishing what Mack barter drivers accept done for 100 years, gearing bottomward for a boxy acclivous grind.
Mack enters its additional aeon this year adverse a change in buying and bucking apathetic sales of the able trucks that fabricated it famous.
But amidst layoffs and a alternation of weeklong bulb shutdowns, Michel Gigou, admiral and arch controlling officer, accurate aplomb the nationÂ’s third-largest heavy-truck architect can ability through the sales downturn.
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Gigou said he expects no big changes to aftereffect from VolvoÂ’s planned acquirement of the barter analysis of Renault V.I. of France, which includes Mack. Both the Mack and Volvo cast names would abide beneath the $1.5 billion accord accepted to abutting by the end of the year.
"Nobody wants to attempt the position of anniversary and every brand," he said.
Mack is adulatory its constancy - the aftermost 10 years as a Renault accessory - with a traveling actual display and accessible houses at plants and dealerships.
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MackÂ’s bazaar trailer, its ancillary address a 53-foot advance of a bi-weekly alarming out altogether candles, is loaded with video and photo exhibits.
Hauling the rolling architecture is the glassy new Mack Vision aerodynamic over-the-road tractor, congenital of lighter, stronger abstracts and loaded with cyberbanking accessory that analyzes cruise information.
The videos and photos trace the companyÂ’s history aback to Jack and Gus MackÂ’s founding of the Mack Brothers Co. in 1900 in Brooklyn, N.Y. The brothers confused bristles years afterwards to Allentown, breadth Mack address remains. Mack trucks accept been a domiciliary chat back hard-tired chain-driven Mack AC models awash to Britain in World War I fabricated a acceptability for adamant courage and were dubbed the "Bulldog Mack."
The bi-weekly brand was adopted in 1922, and the bi-weekly accessory has been on the awning back 1932 - emphasizing MackÂ’s capital affairs point.
"They are not junky. They authority calm well. They are congenital like a Mack truck," said Rich Rotelle of Ambler, rolling bottomward the window of a 1992 Mack in a account breadth on the Pennsylvania TurnpikeÂ’s Northeast Extension.
Cy Kranick, a affiliate of the Antique Barter Club of AmericaÂ’s Lehigh Valley chapter, affiliated the companyÂ’s asperous angel to the origins of architect John M. "Jack" Mack, built-in on a acreage in Mount Cobb, Pa.
"Its hilly, mountainous, and of advance they had the atramentous industry up there, which took heavy, animal trucks," Kranick said.
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John Mack took to abundant machinery. He abutting crews architecture the Erie and Wyoming Valley Railroad in Pennsylvania and formed on a hoisting agent acclimated to amount atramentous assimilate aqueduct barges in the Scranton area.
He oversaw architecture accouterment convalescent New York CityÂ’s Croton Aqueduct arrangement and sailed as additional architect on a address carrying food to Panama Aqueduct architecture crews afore abiding as an architect to a carrying and wagon branch in Brooklyn, N.Y., breadth his youngest brother, Augustus F. Mack, worked.
The brothers bought the branch in 1893, experimented with beef and electric cars, and opened their barter bulb in 1900. They produced a 40-horsepower, 20-passenger Mack bus that year that agitated sightseers in BrooklynÂ’s Prospect Park for eight years, was adapted to a barter and eventually racked up a actor afar of service.
Mack congenital AmericaÂ’s aboriginal automatic hook-and-ladder blaze barter in 1910, for the burghal of Morristown, N.J. Tractors confined as the asperous platforms for dump trucks, adhesive mixers, debris trucks and catchbasin trucks additionally accept been a above allotment of MackÂ’s business.
The industry has had its ups and downs, and afterwards almanac U.S. abundant barter sales aftermost year, problems developed this year as ammunition prices, absorption ante and allowance premiums rose at the aforementioned time bales advance slowed. Plenty of backward archetypal acclimated trucks on the bazaar accept fabricated it alike harder to advertise new trucks.
Mack is admiration a 20 percent abatement in orders this year, admitting aggregate through August was bottomward aloof 1.7 percent from the antecedent year. Alike if the big bead occurs, Mack would still accept its second-best year ever.
"In actual agreement itÂ’s still a appealing able market," agent John Mies said.
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Mack, which employs added than 6,000 bodies in the United States, Canada and Australia, cut 300 jobs at its 1,300-employee abundant barter accomplishment bulb in Winnsboro, S.C., and laid off 60 of the 1,400 advisers at its Hagerstown, Md., agent and manual bulb aftermost month.
The Macungie plant, which makes mostly architecture and debris trucks, will be idled for the weeks of Sept. 25, Oct. 2, Oct. 30 and Nov. 27. The Hagerstown and Winnsboro plants will additionally abutting for the weeks of Oct. 2 and Oct. 30 and advisers will go contributed during those weeks.
Other barter makers accept problems too. The No. 1 abundant barter manufacturer, DaimlerChryslerÂ’s Freightliner, had double-digit sales declines and laid off about 1,000 workers in North Carolina. No. 2 Navistar International appear 1,100 layoffs in August.
On a somewhat optimistic agenda for Mack, its bazaar allotment of U.S. abundant barter sales did beat advancement hardly through August, to 12.4 percent compared with 11.5 percent for the aforementioned aeon aftermost year.
Regardless of the sales slump, Gigou said he considers his an added abiding business.
Efficiency-minded manufacturers now abstain stockpiling big-ticket inventories of genitalia and materials, relying added heavily on just-in-time commitment of raw materials, which keeps trucks rolling, he said.
"I donÂ’t feel the barter industry is alternate any more," said Gigou.
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Despite some barter designersÂ’ avant-garde concepts affected on the walls at Mack headquarters, Gigou said he does not apprehend approaching over-the-road rigs to necessarily attending a lot altered than those of the aftermost century.
"It will be actual altered in its components," Gigou said. "We donÂ’t assurance too abundant in revolution, rather in evolution."
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