Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
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Mack's big dog 42 | Overdrive | May 2014 Drive TesT 42 | Overdrive | May 2014 Mack ' s big dog Titan By Mack primed to meet toughest challenges of construction rebound BY JACK ROBERTS I f you went into a lab and boiled down everything Mack Trucks has learned over the past 114 years from every battlefield, job site, dam and highway that have seen its trucks, you'd probably come away with a truck like the 2014 Titan By Mack. This is Mack's heavy-haul/ severe-service champ: A beast of a truck with a 265-inch wheelbase, a 44,000-pound Mack S440 rear axle and a 605-horsepower Mack MP10 diesel. In an age where Mack has made great strides with aerodynam- ics and fuel economy, the Titan is a throwback to an age when trucks got their work done through brute force. Mack debuted the model in 2006, just in time to watch the economy crash and take the construction sector with it. Since then, the company hasn't done much to promote the truck, pre- ferring to wait until the business envi- ronment improved. Today, housing starts are up, and oilfield work is going like gangbusters. So when I called Mack about getting behind the wheel of a Titan at its home base in Allentown, Pa., the com- pany was happy to oblige. For a good indicator of Titan's toughness, you need only look to the Australian Outback, where the truck is a popular pick for pulling roadtrains across barren desert. So it was a good bet that my test truck was more than up to hauling a flatbed of concrete barri- cades that brought us to 80,000 pounds. Stu Russoli, Mack's product man- ager for vocational market segments, said my test Titan was spec'd for Texas oilfield work with a longer wheelbase, high horsepower, 52-inch axle spacing, the company's 18-speed manual trans- mission and Rawhide interior package. Despite the truck's size, visibility from the driver's seat was extremely good. The cab height, combined with some artful engineering, extended visibility to the front of the truck over the long- nosed hood required to create room for the MP10. The gold Mack Bulldog sitting on the nose signifies an all-Mack powertrain and drivetrain. Jack Roberts TestDrive_0514.indd 42 4/30/14 11:36 PM