Jonathan Randall, president of Mack Trucks, took to the mic at ATA’s MCE conference to talk about the current state of the trucking market and what’s potentially ahead for 2024.

“There is strong market anticipation that we’ll see a pullback. To what extent we really haven’t publicly stated yet, but the forecast says that any pullback that we see is going to be in the long-haul business,” Randall said. “When you look at the heavy-duty market, let’s talk about the 330,000 trucks that we see that we think are going to be retail this year. What you see in 2022 is long haul counted for 52% of total registrations. What you see this year is it’s, counting year to date, at about 49.1%.

“That market usually hovers in the 50% [range]; it is the engine that powers the train of the North American commercial truck market,” he continued. “When I say that there may be a softening, where you’re going to see the softening is probably in that segmentation for the most part. A couple of years ago, that number was 48%. When we had the real trial, that number was about 42% long haul registrations. We’re not going to go down to 42% long haul, but you should see probably a little bit of a pullback.”

Watch Randall’s full presentation:

Mack Trucks introduces Mack Connect fleet management portal

Mack Trucks announced Mack Connect, a fleet management portal that enables customers to digitally access information about the Mack-powered trucks in their fleet. Mack Connect gathers critical aspects about a customer’s trucks, services and their specific application. The Mack Connect toolbox includes data about asset location, idle time, traffic information, fuel efficiency, safety performance and vehicle speed. Users can access the status of their Mack vehicles through a 4G Telematics Gateway, factory-installed at Lehigh Valley Operations, Macungie, Penn., where all Class 8 Mack vehicles for North America are assembled.

Mack Connect offers visibility to the Mack GuardDog Connect integrated telematics solution to allow users to manage fault events should they occur, while also providing visibility to over-the-air updates when available. Reporting and analytics are available so customers may analyze the data to determine whether adjustments need to be made to improve efficiencies.

Mack piloted Mack Connect with several customers before today’s launch. Hilco Transport, based in Greensboro, N.C., was one of the customers that participated. About 50% of the 500-vehicle Hilco fleet are Mack trucks. Currently, more than 200 of Hilco’s Mack vehicles are using Mack Connect.

“I’m a data-driven kind of person, so I like to be able to pull up the data that Mack Connect provides in real-time and present it when we have our executive meetings,” said Mike Laughead, director of maintenance for Hilco. “We are impressed with the system, and it helps managers keep tabs on operations.”

Laughead said aside from the reporting of data, he’s most impressed by the map feature, which allows users to locate and click on a vehicle and access all the data associated with that truck.

Mack Connect with integrated uptime is standard on all new Mack-powered Model Year 2025 vehicles for two years.