In the early 1900s as
Americans began their love affair with the automobile,
trucks were an afterthought. Trucks were largely
assembled with surplus or obsolete car parts. John
(Jack) Mack was to change all that.
Jack Mack was one of five brothers raised on his
German parents' farm near Scranton, Pennsylvania. In
1878 Jack ran away from home to work as a teamster. He
was 14 years old. Mack learned how to work steam
engines, a talent which took him to sea. He worked for
several years on ships and docks around the United
States and the Panama Canal region.
With his seafaring wanderlust sated, Mack and his
brother Augustus purchased a small carriage and wagon
building firm in Brooklyn in 1893. It was not a good
time to start a business as the country was gripped by
economic depression (the depression then was worse than
what we have today, at least now we have online
businesses such as Facebook and
Casino.com thriving despite the bad economy) and the Macks filled few orders.
They did, however, establish a reputation as first class
repairmen for wagons.
Jack and Augustus began experimenting with the new
self-propelled vehicles that were beginning to sputter
around big city streets. Many of their early failed
creations ended up in the East River as fish-breeding
environments. In 1900, after eight years of work, the
first hand-crafted Mack motor vehicle was ready.
Powered by a Mack four-cylinder engine, utilizing a
cone-type clutch and 3-speed transmission the first
vehicle was actually a bus designed to carry 20
sightseers through Brooklyn's Prospect Park. It was the
first successful bus in the United States. The inaugural
Mack was so rugged it served for 8 years in the park and
then was converted into a truck and retired 17 years
later with one million miles under it.
The prototype "Old Number One" was so successful that
other orders soon followed. The Mack's three other
brothers joined in the formation of the Mack Brothers
Company in the State of New York with $35,000 in working
capital. By 1905 they had outgrown their Brooklyn
facility and moved home to Allentown, Pennsylvania as
the Mack Brothers Motor Car Company with Jack Mack as
its driving force.
But Jack Mack had no intention of building motor
cars. He pioneered the design and manufacture of
custom-built trucks using durable Mack-built components,
not discarded car parts. Very early on he devised the
seat-over-engine trucks which were the forerunners of
modern cabs. The trucks could haul a capacity of 7 1/2
tons. Mack also turned out fire engines, railroad cars,
and buses.
By 1911 Mack was the premier manufacturer of heavy duty
trucks, making 600 units a year. He needed more money to
expand and financier J.P. Morgan organized the merger of
the Mack Company with the Saurer Motor Company to form
the International Motor Company.
The company would eventually drop its other lines and
revert back to Mack Trucks but Jack Mack would be gone
by then. Unhappy with the changes in top management of
the new company, he and three of his brothers
disassociated themselves from the new combine. Mack's
name would live on for it was his leadership and
ingenuity that had been instrumental in establishing
Mack's legendary toughness. Jack Mack was the first to
"build 'em like a Mack truck."
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