Impalamino has posted a truckload of fine finds at the Cohort. There’s several that must be written up, as soon as time permits. But let’s take a quick look at this handsome Mack B61, an iconic truck if ever there was one (unless perhaps you lived in the Western US).
Of course, this one is missing its bulldog hood ornament, but then these are very popular items to filch. The B-Series was built from 1953 through 1966, but it seems like it was forever. If you lived on the East Coast, well into the eighties these were still very common sights. During their heyday, they were just everywhere; undoubtedly the most common conventional (hood) truck of the era.
Unlike most truck companies, Mack built almost everything that went into its trucks, including the Thermodyne diesel engines. I have vivid memories of driving through the mountains of Western Pennsylvania on the Turnpike at night, and seeing Macks working hard up the grades with little orange flames on the tips of their exhaust stacks. That was one way to burn off the excess hydrocarbons, but not exactly the most efficient.
I notice that somebody has already helped themself to the hood ornament!
Back in my hitchhiking days I got picked up by a B61 on Route 22 in western Arkansas. It seemed as though the driver was constantly shifting the thing, at times using both hands to simultaneously change gears and rear axel ratio. It was hot, noisy, and incredibly uncomfortable. It took a real he-man to drive these things.
This one sits just outside the gates of a weird urban junkyard. There’s all kinds of interesting stuff in there (I can tell from the aerials and driving by with the gates open) but the owners are VERY suspicious of strangers.
I think they used the Mack and the low-boy to haul in a lot of the scrap heavy equipment that resides in the yard. The Mack itself hasn’t moved for several years.
More than likely it was a “duplex” transmission where the main box had 5 gears and a 2 speed aux. “splitter” box. What this meant was each gear on the main box had to go through a Lo and a Hi gear on the aux. box.
i.e. 1st speed = 1st gear main/ Lo gear aux.
2nd speed = 1st gear main/Hi gear aux.
3rd speed = 2nd gear main/Lo gear aux.
and so on for 10 total speeds. The challenge came when you hooked your left arm through the steering wheel (to keep the truck going straight) to shift the main box from 1st. to 2nd. and simultaneously using your right hand to shift the auxiliary box from Hi back to Lo. You did this through all 10 speeds, up and down, all without synchromesh.
That was the sissy tranny. There were also the 15 speed triplex trannies (5 x 3) and the 20 speed quadraplex trannies (5 x 4). I’ll let you figure out the shift patterns for those two. You held god status if you had a quadraplex tranny and had it mastered.
The hardest part? Remembering what speed you were in to know which levers had to be moved to which gear for your next up or down shift.
“Let’s see. Am I in 4th/Hi or 5th/Lo?’
Thanks for the information on US trucks’ transmissions. I’m wondering why automatics weren’t/aren’t popular?
Efficiency. There were Allison automatics going way back, and automatics are making inroads again, but efficiency and many gear ratios has kept manuals in the forefront, mostly.
It was also too hard to make them stand up to pulling anything up to 100+ tonnes. There was a truck featured on a local tv show that was used for heavy haulage, it had pulled 150-200 tonne loads in its time. The (original) owner said that with enough gears you can haul anything – of course there are a few other things to worry about.
Stan; thanks for that description. I used to ride with truckers quite a bit when hitchhiking, and was duly impressed with their ability to simultaneously shift and steer at the same time.
These were the first decent linehaul trucks capable of interstate heavy haulage in Aussie with integrated sleeper cabs they revolutionised the transport industry there. Still plenty around but they get snapped up by collectors these days rather than scrap dealers
One of these was one the first to be used in Australia as a dedicated drag racing truck. It was purple from memory. I saw it several times in the 80’s at Surfers Paradise Raceway. I can’t remember its name,but I recall two of its contemporaries, the Bandag Bullet and Waltzing Matilda (a jet powered Ford Louisville).
Nice find. A bit of Mack Trivia: On all models from the mid 60s to mid 90s a Gold Bulldog denotes that it came from the factory with a “pedigreed” drive train of all Mack components. A Silver Bulldog meant that one or more of you engine, trans or rear-ends were non mack.
In most major metros in the US you can spot the R-Models that came after still in service as vocational trucks.
The West Coast equivalent to this would be the Peterbilt 281/351 aka the villain from Duel.
That’s an interesting bit of trivia on the gold/silver bulldog. Never noticed that. I moonlighted one winter in the late ’80s driving a logging truck on the Alaska highway and spent many hours looking past the bulldog’s back end. E9-500 with a 12 speed, and yes it was gold. A strong pulling truck, and I really liked the 12 speed with it’s evenly spaced ratios. It was one rough SOB empty though.
Ditto; I remember seeing some in gold, but didn’t make the connection.
Interesting tidbit. Sometime in the early to mid-eighties, my father bought an orange ’79 F150 Ranger SuperCab LWB pickup from a Ford Dealer. It had a 400 engine & was a very long vehicle.
Attached to its hood was a gold Mack bulldog. We weren’t a bunch that named vehicles but that truck was known as “Super Dog” & it took plenty of abuse for years & years — The bulldog really looked cool on that truck & everyone remarked about it.
I grew up seeing R-models everywhere. A few B’s were around, but not many. As stated earlier, they were very popular for vocational use, particularly garbage trucks. A friend told me it was precisely because of the all-Mack powertrains, they were “idiot-proof”. My friend, a truck mechanic, explained that most garbage trucks were not owner-operated, thus they were treated harshly by drivers. An all-Mack set-up could take the abuse.