Mack Trucks Historical Museum celebrates 40th anniversary

The Mack Trucks Historical Museum is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2024, marking decades of documenting and chronicling the history of Mack Trucks. 

Located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the nonprofit museum is a 15,000-square-foot Mack-themed exhibition housed at the Mack Experience Center. About 10,000 annual visitors are drawn to the museum's vintage Mack trucks and detailed archives on display.

"Since its inception in 1900, Mack Trucks has been involved in everything from World War I to major infrastructure projects such as the construction of the Hoover Dam and the New York City subway system," said David Galbraith, Mack Trucks vice president of global brand and marketing. "We are proud to have the Mack Museum showcase all of these landmark construction projects, as well as Mack's 124 years of achievements."

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the Mack Museum will be commemorated at the biennial Trucktoberfest at the Mack Experience Center in October.

On display are 30 vehicles for guests of all ages to see and enjoy. The vehicles, all of which are operational, have been restored and preserved by a group of dedicated museum staff and volunteers. This includes a 1909 Mack tourist bus used in both Chicago and New Orleans, and Megatron, the 2006 Mack Granite military truck from the 2011 film "Transformers, Dark of the Moon."

The museum, which does not charge admission, also has more than 40 million pages of records detailing Mack's history and its position in the development of the modern American truck.

"Not only do we preserve and catalog the Mack legacy, but we also share the importance of our vehicles to the function of the world," said Doug Maney, Mack Museum curator and lead caretaker. "Each year, we answer more than 1,500 questions about Mack, from dealers seeking to service an older truck to hobbyists asking about vehicle parts. It is an honor to maintain Mack history by providing this information."

The Mack story is additionally told through an array of memorabilia displayed in the museum, such as a 20-foot Bulldog statue from Mack's former headquarters in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

To curate this collection, Maney and his staff sort through thousands of donated Mack-themed items. Donation boxes often contain Mack drawings, photographs, or old emblems.