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One of the original sightseeing buses built by Jack and Augustus Mack in the first decade of the century is in the Mack Museum, in Allentown Pennsylvania. The gas-operated, open-air bus carried up to 26 tourists at a time around the streets and sights of Chicago in the summer and New Orleans in the winter, courtesy of the Higgins Tour Company. In 1925, the bus was returned to Mack when it was bought from Higgins and put on display.
You can also see a 1911 Mack Jr. that shared the streets with horse-drawn wagons as it made it's rounds delivering dry goods and produce. It's the final truck design attributed to the Mack brothers before they sold their company to investors in 1911.
Then there's the 1918 AC model, one of 4,100 built for World War I. Although there's no bulldog on the hood of this early Mack truck, it was the AC that earned the name while it was busy dodging bullets and trudging through the mud in France. The truck's unique blunt-nosed design reminded British troops of their own bulldogs. So did it's tenacious ability to get through anything with the supplies needed at the front.
For many visitors, the museum's real treasures aren't made of steel at all, but of paper and celluloid. There are more than 80,000 photos in the collection, many dating back to 1905. And there are records. If you came across an old AB truck under a tarp in a shed, there will undoubtedly be a record made when it was built. The company's been doing it for every chassis manufactured since 1905, and except for a few rare cases, they are filed at the museum.
If you’d like information about a particular truck from the Mack Museum, send a letter to the address below, and don’t forget to include the complete chassis number and your postal address.
Address:
The Mack Trucks Historical Museum
Don Schumaker, Curator
997 Postal Road
Allentown, Pennsylvania
18103, USA
Telephone: 1-610-266-6767
Fax: 1-610-266-6823
Mack Trucks Museum opening hours:
10:00am to 4:00pm.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Please call before you visit!