Jeff Loudermilk can tell you anything you want to know about Hilco Transport, but he laughs when you ask about uptime. He stopped tracking it years ago, because he didn’t have enough issues to report. His 381-truck fleet — 279 of which are Mack Pinnacles and Granites® — keeps rolling, season after season, regardless of climate or application. Downtime is a distant memory.
“When John Jennings made the commitment to become greener, Mack — the leader in the industry — already had a product engineered for the refuse industry,” Brown says. “A lot of the big garbage guys have gone green. Lots of contracts and municipalities want it.”
“When that sheriff’s department calls and they’ve got a tractor-trailer blocking five lanes of interstate, they don’t want to hear that the truck won’t run or that we’re putting on a tire,” Adams says. “They want to know we’re on the way. The man at a red light, broken down in a log truck, needs to get that truck to a repair facility so he can make a living. It’s as important to the small man as it is to the large, right up to the state patrol.”
Sunoco was rapidly expanding its footprint across the nation and needed a truck manufacturer that could keep pace with company goals. It had five major requirements: the tractors needed to be lightweight, driver friendly, fuel efficient, powerful and good-looking. Mack Trucks provided all that and more, says Bob Manchester, Sunoco’s senior director of Transportation/Operations.
“I was 53 when I started. I had tried other things out there, but I was getting older all the time, and I got to thinking, ‘I’d like to drive a truck. I think I would be good at it.’ I was tired of being broke. I didn’t have medical insurance. I was tired of going nowhere. I wanted to have a skill.”
Every day, more than 500 drivers — including nearly 200 owner-operators — haul loads coast to coast for Carroll Fulmer Logistics Corporation, Groveland, Florida. Monte Vanover, director of fleet maintenance, keeps the trucks — a challenge he says he enjoys even more since implementing Mack Trucks’ GuardDog® Connect.
