“The whole point about trucks is to keep them moving down the road, as a dear friend of mine says; if a truck’s not killing bugs by its windshield, it’s not making money for the customer. So we would like to keep killing bugs,” said Mack Trucks President Martin Weissburg during a recent media event where he introduced himself and gave insight on where Mack Trucks is headed for the future.
He was an expatriate living in Europe serving most recently as president of Volvo Construction Equipment, a global Volvo Group company but wanted to be closer to family. “… when the Mack opportunity came available, I quickly raised my hand,” he said. “To me, it’s the dream job of a career based in the heavy equipment, truck trailer industry.
“For me, Mack is like the cherry on top. It’s the dream job.” He added, “I grew up in Howard County, Maryland, just a few hours from here. I worked in construction to get myself through … college and growing up in Mack territory … to be able to join now as leader of this iconic brand, this fantastic product with this great team is really a wonderful opportunity for me.”
Weissburg returned to the United States in January and put together a parallel onboarding program with former president Dennis Slagle, which put Weissburg deeply involved in the operations of Mack Trucks since the first quarter of this year and was named president effective June 1 of this year. Weissburg also serves on the executive board of the Volvo Group.
“Every CEO has his goals, his dreams and his or her ego and I’m no different,” he said. “Mack Trucks has a strategy of profitable growth, not growth just for growth’s sake … so we can continue to reinvest in our products and our facilities.”
Facility investment
Mack Trucks has invested significantly in its facilities, not just in its products. “You have to have great facilities to have great products,” Weissburg said.
The Mack Customer Center in Allentown, Pa., has had $3 million in investment and the Lehigh Valley Operations (LVO) has had over $80 million of investment over the past few years.
Production at LVO is at an all-time high and employees about 2,400 people. “It’s productive, it’s state-of-the-art and continues to churn out these great Mack Products,” said Weissburg.
The company started in Brooklyn in 1900 and moved to the Lehigh Valley in 1907 and Weissburg stressed, “When we think of Mack Trucks, we think of the Lehigh Valley; for us, we can’t separate the two. This is our ancestral home.”
In Mack Trucks’ Hagerstown, Md., facility, they make their engines, transmissions and axles since the early 1960s. The Uptime Center is based in Greensboro, N.C., which is like their “air traffic control center,” he said. The center was inaugurated about four years ago.
While they’ve heavily invested in their facilities, he said they will continue to do so. “Every factory, every operation — including the executive office — always have room for improvement.
“There are always needs in a factory for additional spending.” He continued, “I had a meeting earlier today and I have [more] tomorrow where we’re talking about not if we spend more, but where do we spend more next because you have to maintain state-of-the-art technology and facilities and keep moving things forward.”
Products moving the brand forward
Weissburg, along with Senior Vice President for Sales, Mack Trucks North America, Jonathan Randall, shared an update on the product lineup. One of the new rollouts was on the highway product side, the Mack Anthem. Weissburg said, “The response from the market greatly exceeds our expectations.
“We are and continue to grow and take share in the highway segment,” he said.
“When you spend the money and time developing a product like the Mack Anthem, it’s not to sit back and hope it goes OK, it’s to play offense and that’s what we’re doing.” He continued, “The way we stay ahead and continue to ride this very strong acceptance is to deliver on the product promise and maintain the very good quality that’s coming out of the factory down the street here.
“We’re letting the product and our strong dealer network and the experience the customers have with us on the other products, speak for [themselves].” He stressed, “That’s what’s selling the Anthem.”
“… We can’t make them fast enough right now — what a pleasure,” he said. “And what a pleasure for me, having been long with the parent organization, the Volvo Group, but now in my new position as president of Mack, to be here at the same time that we launched the Anthem.”
Production of Mack Anthem was ramped up the first quarter of the year, leading into the second quarter. As an indication of the level of interest, he said the Anthem with 70-inch sleeper, year-to-date, has orders more than two times that what it was for all of last year. “Very strong demand,” he stressed.
He refers to the Anthem as the “driver’s truck” with its features, benefits and comforts. As a testament to that point, he mentioned customers that have them in their yards and on the lots to put out front so when they were having recruitment fairs to attract drivers, they could tell the potential drivers, if you come work for us, you could drive one of these one day. “And that was even before they had a couple of them rolling in their fleets,” he said.
In the highway market, Weissburg said all of their segments are doing well right now, including the low cabover, the LR, the MR and the Granite.
Randall said a lot of the growth on the Class 8 is coming from the on-highway segment, and a lot of it is coming from fleets.
Maintaining uptime
One of the newest things they’re testing is the Over The Air, which allows remote software updates for powertrain components and vehicle parameters with Mack trucks equipped with Mack 2017 or newer engines.
“We’re successfully working to eliminate the need for drivers and fleets to bring their trucks into dealers for software fixes,” Randall explained. He said they’re testing it now on several fleets on several hundred trucks.
If there’s a code that gets thrown, they schedule to do the work when the driver is going to be taking downtime. “We come in, over the air, update the truck, and then the driver … cycles the truck back on, the repair is complete, and they can move on down the road,” he said.
Over The Air is their latest innovation to continue to drive productivity in the fleet at the customer level and they intend to invest heavily into it, going forward.
As any truck down is viewed as a crisis, Weissburg and Randall said Mack’s job is to get them the help they need; it’s about limiting breakdowns and when downtime or dwell time does occur, making it as little time as possible for that truck.
“The whole point about trucks,” Weissburg said, “is to keep them moving down the road.
“It’s that uptime promise, which is part of the Mack brand promise that we obviously put our money and our resources where our mouth is,” said Weissburg. “It’s a multi-leg stool. We have the products, we have the dealers, we provide the financing and the leasing for our customers and we have the uptime services that have no equal.”
Managing the business cycle
Like the industry overall, there are a number of challenges Mack Trucks faces, including supply chain constraints and increased supply costs.
The market has very strong demand right now on component suppliers and castings and some of Mack’s suppliers are also finding it difficult to attract skilled labor. A lot of them, from a labor standpoint, are stretched.
This is where being part of a global group has benefit, he said. “We have a global supply chain and we leverage that, I think, pretty darn well.
“We have our share of challenges in the current supply chain, as well. It won’t last forever, but it’s not over yet.”
Generally speaking, costs are up, starting with the cost of raw materials, particularly steel and aluminum. Logistics costs are up for everyone and as Weissburg said, if freight haulers have the right product and good drivers, it’s good days for them.
“Prices are up for most people and we all manage our businesses in the right way to try to manage that whole picture,” Weissburg explained. “But again, manage it over the business cycle, understanding that buying a Mack truck is not just a point-in-time purchase; it’s a long-term relationship and we’re a relationship company, not just a vendor of new trucks and say goodbye.”
