BROOKLYN, N.Y. – Truck manufacturers roll out new models all the time. What they don’t often do is bring a slew of journalists who write about trucking into New York City to talk about it.
But that happened earlier this week when Mack Trucks, a member of the Volvo Group, introduced the Mack Pioneer, the manufacturer’s attempt to improve on its current 2% (by its estimate) share of the over-the-road truck market in the U.S.
“We haven’t really achieved a lot of success in the long-haul market,” Fernando Couceiro, Mack’s vice president and product owner for highway trucks, said at a briefing with journalists shortly after they were transported to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a first look at the new tractor. (A full reveal to the public at the Navy Yard occurred Tuesday evening.)
Couceiro said the Anthem, Mack’s current leading tractor offering, “is a great day cab product. We have a very strong position in the market. But we haven’t really achieved a lot of success in the long-haul sleeper segment.”
The Pioneer – which has an automatic transmission – is designed to change that, and Couceiro said Mack would be ready to begin taking orders on it Wednesday, the day after the Brooklyn revea to the media and in the bigger evening event to a larger group.
Throughout the two days, Couceiro and other Mack officials touted the key features of the Pioneer that are driving their enthusiasm.
Couceiro described it as “the most aerodynamic truck in the world.” The working project name for the Pioneer had the word Aero in it.
Specifically, he said by various measures, the combination of a number of changes – from the aerodynamic design to the digital mirrors – translates into an 11% increase in efficiency over the Anthem. He split that as a 3% improvement in power train efficiency and 8% from the aerodynamic features of the tractor.
The company highlighted the digital mirrors especially. In the press release announcing the Pioneer, Mack said the mirrors are a camera system that would produce about 1 percentage point of the 11% estimate of greater efficiency.
But the word that kept coming up in the discussions was “comfort.” It was one of the four features, along with driving efficiency, reliability and fuel efficiency, that Couceiro said drivers and buyers of the trucks sought in their purchases.
Lukas Yates, the brand designer for Mack Trucks who kicked off the presentation to the trucking media, said the design changes include a shift in the iconic bulldog that sits at the front of all Mack Trucks.
“Rather than sitting on a pedestal, the bulldog hood ornament is now integrated with the truck’s design, flanked by air intakes that help manage airflow under the hood, making it an integral part of the truck’s performance rather than just an emblem,” Yates said, according to the company’s prepared statement about the Pioneer launch.
Couceiro said the launch of the Pioneer did not mean the end of the Anthem, which will coexist for “a little while, and then there’s more to come.” He added that Mack expects to “reintroduce” its entire line of trucks within the next few years, and the Pioneer is the “first one out of the gate.”
For all the focus on the design, Couceiro said the ultimate key performance indicator would be market share.
“The lagging KPI is really market share,” he said. “It means we’re in the wrong place. The leading KPI really is whether people are willing to buy more and more trucks.”
The goal, Couceiro said, would be to add 5 to 6 percentage points in over-the-road market share via a successful rollout of the Pioneer. The time frame on that goal is now through 2030, he added.
“We want drivers to be bugging their fleet managers saying, ‘I want to drive that truck,’” Couceiro said. “So for me personally, that’s what I would consider a success when we get that feedback, and we have customers that are considering it for their long-haul applications.”
Mack officials said the Pioneer was tested at a driver clinic at Virginia Tech, whose Blacksburg campus coincidentally is near the site of the Volvo truck manufacturing plant, a sister operation to Mack Trucks within the Volvo Group. They said the test was unbranded so drivers did not know they were driving a Mack Truck, allowing them to “provide unbiased evaluations of the cab’s ergonomics and features,” according to the Mack statement.
Vince Lokers, Mack’s specialist and chief designer who led the creation of the cab, went through the wide range of changes Mack is spotlighting about the driver experience – among them a refrigerator under the seat, where the cupholders are, and an electronic logging device pivot that allows more movement of the ELD. It’s the full range of features inside a cab that can appear unimportant at first but which, as Lokers described it, are key to getting driver acceptance that your cab is better than the next guy’s. (And truck manufacturers compete fiercely over the little things.)
Included in the features that Mack has gone out of its way to highlight that would specifically target drivers:
- Seats with armrests on both sides, which Mack said “ensures drivers’ arms travel with them on the suspension rather than resting on the fixed door panel.”
- Holes in the steps to reduce the buildup of ice or snow.
- Multiple configurations that include a day cab, three midroof sleepers of 44, 64 and 76 inches, and a 76-inch-high roof sleeper that allows the rear bunk to be “rotated” against the sleeper area’s real wall for more space. The presentation showed a small eating area in the place where the lower bunk would have been before it was folded up.
- Frontal air bags as standard and a side air curtain protection system that is also part of the package.
Couceiro put a wrap on the message by discussing the experience behind the wheel. Conceding that he wasn’t a truck driver but had driven in numerous vehicles, he said the Pioneer is “easy to drive, but you feel powerful. … It feels like you’re driving a really luxurious pickup truck, not really a Class A heavy-duty tractor, right? So that’s at least my personal feedback of what comes to my mind in terms of, how does it feel to drive this amazing vehicle?”
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