Dean Bestwick, Vice President of Mack Trucks Australia, has given Prime Mover an exclusive insight into the brand’s marketing strategy – acknowledging that it has undergone some quite significant changes already.
“Five or six years ago, the Mack brand was very much focused, and even pigeon holed, into the vocational market and we were driven particularly by the construction segment. If the construction industry went down, then so did we,” he said.
“With the advent of the new Mack MP engines and the mDRIVE transmission, as well as a couple of little tweaks in our wheelbases and sleeper cabs, our ratio from rigids to tractor (prime mover) units has swung back the opposite way than what it was five years ago. Our tractor units would now represent a minimum of 65 per cent of our build whereas before it was 25 per cent of our build.”
But, there’s more that has changed within the Mack company over recent years. “Up until mid-2009 the Elite package, which is a Mack proprietary drive line all the way through, made up about one per cent penetration. Now we are at 25 per cent penetration. We didn’t have diff locks in any of those products, but now we do; as well as roll stability control, which is applicable to those units with the Mack diffs. We still have a full suite of Eaton and Meritor back ends available, but our Mack proprietary driveline has turned the corner again and we are getting a lot of traction.”
He added, “We are in a great position at the moment. We don’t want to pump out a generic truck that’s trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”
Read the full story in the current edition of Prime Mover, out now!
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