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Every great once in a while a firefighter would fall off the back step when we still rode the back step. While returning from a call a member fell off and rolled into a ditch pretty much uninjured. The comment from the unit that found him was "Look, someone threw out a perfectly good fireman."

If I were the manufacturer I'd be more concerned about overall profitability than sales volume. It is pretty easy to boost sales volume by lowering product cost to, or below, production cost to try to meet my competitor's pricing, but you won't be around long. My personal view point is Mack needs to be known for quality first, not price point. $10K per unit can be sucked up pretty quickly in repairs and down time. I have zero experience in the commercial truck world, but I know what we did in the fire service field. We tracked our per mile cost for each vehicle and that influenced our purchases and when we dumped a piece. We have let two to five year old trucks go just because they became so expensive and unreliable to operate. To me life cycle costs are the ultimate factor, not initial costs.

Glad to hear they are putting the capital into the plant that is needed to keep the Mack brand strong. And where the plant manager comes from is irrelevant as long as he/she continues to make Mack a product that customers want to buy.

Nope, what browser are you using. Internet Explorer will not work on the site for me.

Keep looking around as it is becoming much more common. Even the local WaWa sells it now at a price point about $1.50 higher than regular unleaded.

What every man hopes to hear. Nice job.

Here is the pump I put on mine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CIQ5DG/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It has two posts so you can use it on a positive ground system.

The weep hole is there for a purpose. If you block the leakage it may be filling the crankcase with raw fuel.

I would run non-ethanol fuel. Most of the "real" fuel sold is mid-grade octane, so that should be sufficient. A friend tried running racing fuel in his 29 White, but it caused a severe vapor lock problem. I assume you put a fuel shut off at the tank. If the truck is going to get minimal use I'd run it dry every time it is parked.

And I forgot Oren, Howe, Grumman, Hammerly, John Bean, and Young. Others like Ahrens-Fox disappeared before I started in the fire service. I agree 1901 has made it safer, but I'll never agree with the mandate to make them ugly as well as safe.

Every builder seems to live on the financial edge. The only major builders that are still in business from when I started in the fire service are Seagrave and Pierce. A few like Quality and Ferrara were around then, but they were pretty much regional builders. Who's gone: Mack, ALF, Ward LF, Maxim, Pirsch, Hahn, Crown, 3-D, Buffalo, American and Imperial come to mind. As I said I just don't keep up on what the builders are up to. Glad to hear E-One is back after being bought out.

The fuel tank was obviously full. It takes a huge amount of heat to get a full tank to burn or even vent out. The tank acted as a fire break to keep the heat from the rear tires. Based on the first pictures I'd say either the left fuel tanks, or the fuel delivery system, failed which resulted in the ground fire you see. Also note that there is almost no interior fire in the first picture. Just a swag, but I'd want to look at the left fuel tank mounts, fuel delivery system or check to see if an object impaled the tank or struck the fuel delivery system.

Very nice. Never thought I'd see the day that a BFD rig had an EMS compartment. Glad that at least one builder can still deliver a rig that isn't the size of a freight car.

Since I retired I just don't keep up on the various machinations of the builders. Last I heard E-One was on the brink of bankruptcy with many of their big dealers either folding or dropping them to rep other builders. I guess they turned it around? E-One used to own Northern Virginia, now I don't think they have had a delivery here in the last decade. Fairfax went from 100% E-One to 100% Pierce with over 100 Pierce delivery's in the last 15 years. Locally I see a lot of Pierces with a very few other brands scattered in. Ah, don't we wish Mack would get back in the game!

Glad he is OK. It's tough right now, but when it is all said and done my bet is he will say he's glad it burned up completely so the insurance company didn't try to force him to fix it.

I'll try to find the picture of the Model A my Dad and Grandfather built to pull their home made orchard sprayer. Steel wheels, two transmissions placed back to back for very deep gear reduction, and of course very little original sheet metal. I spent many an hour "driving" the old girl as a kid when it was abandoned by the side of the garden. The sprayer was pretty neat as well. Built on a 32 Packard chassis carrying a John Bean high pressure pump powered by a 28 Chevy engine supplied by a five hundred gallon wooden tank. They used it right up to when he closed the orchard in the early 60's. I'm sure it made any Packard fan cringe when they spotted those distinctive steel dished wheels on the sprayer.

There is a car hauling company that I see on I-95 still using them. I assume they are able to buy replacements.

Welcome back. Hope you had a good trip.

Have you written to the Museum to get the history of your truck? If so, they should have supplied a build ticket with all of the part numbers and options listed that were used.

The only time I'm right is when I admit I was wrong.

Probably a several million dollar machine and they still couldn't engineer a way to keep rain from running down the stack. I can imagine the morning routine " Hey John, run the loader over here so we can pick the trash can off of the grader." And there must be two of them since you can see another trash can covered stack over the front right tires.

We had a guy from my home town that pulled for a local cardboard box company with a GMC equipped with a 3-53. Talk about a unique sound.

I wish them well, but the single hardest thing to do in any organization is to effect a culture change. Pro sports teams try by firing the coach, but unless you fire the entire team and start over it rarely works. When you have several thousand employees it is basically impossible IMO.

Exactly why newer diesels have primer pumps to fill the filters. The filters should never be pre-filled.

$35K may seem a little high, but my bet is he has more than twice that in it.