Mac AC "Bulldog"

[David]

In the first years of the 1900’s the Mack Brothers Company in Brooklyn, NY, with big success shifted from making horse drawn carriages to producing gasoline-powered buses. So even before 1914, Mack had got themselves an international reputation. At the outset of World I, the Mack brothers shifted production, now to making trucks for military purposes.

The heavy duty AC model was introduced in 1916, the unusual snub nose hood and dash mounted radiator were its most distinctive features. (The first didn't have a windshield. The transmission was powerful but heavy to shift.) With its chain drive rear axle, the AC model soon earned an unparalleled reputation for reliability and durability, and was called on to help accomplish nearly impossible tasks. While other trucks were bogged down in the axle-deep mud of the French countryside, the AC proved to be unstoppable.

The truck earned its nickname when in British service (some over 2,000 units were delievered to Great Britain) either from engineers testing AC's or from Tommies in France saying that the rugged snub-nosed truck either looked like or had the tenacity of “a bulldog”. And as at this time, the symbol of Great Britain was the bulldog, this was high praise indeed. (In 1922 the Mack company adopted the Bulldog as its corporate symbol.) Adopted as the standard 5-ton truck, 4.470 Mack AC trucks went to France with the American Expeditionary Force. And the American soldiers soon came to express the same high opinion of the truck. Mack AC’s were delivered to the French Army as well.

From its 1916 introduction until 1939, 40,299 of these impressive trucks had been built.