Titan is Mack’s heavy-haul/severe-service Big Dog: A beast of a truck with a 265 inch wheelbase, a 44,000 pound Mack S440 rear axle and a 605 horsepower Mack MP10 diesel engine under the hood. In an age where Mack is known as an aerodynamic and fuel economy leader, the Titan is a throwback to an age when trucks got their work done by dint of sheer, brute force.
Titan isn’t a new truck, exactly. Mack debuted the model back in 2006 – just in time to watch the economy – and the construction sector in particularly – crash spectacularly. Since then, the company hasn’t bothered to do much in the way of promoting the truck, preferring to wait patiently until things improved. And although we’d all love to see Congress pass a highway bill sometime soon, the beleaguered construction industry is showing particularly strong signs of life at the moment. Housing starts are up and oil field work is going like gangbusters. So when I called Mack up and inquired about getting behind the wheel of a Titan, they were only too happy to oblige.
For a good indicator of how tough Titan is, you need only turn your head Down Under, to the Australian Outback, when the truck is a preferred hauler pulling roadtrains across the barren desert wastes. In fact, according to Mack, the Titan currently holds the record Down Under for the largest roadtrain haul on the books.
With numbers like that backing it up, it was a sure bet my Titan – which had just returned from doing booth duty at the big ConExpo construction show in Las Vegas — was more than up to hauling a flatbed loaded with 80,000 pounds of concrete barricades.
Stu Russoli, Mack’s product manager for vocational market segments, told me this particular truck is spec’d especially for Texas oil field work, and as such comes with the aforementioned longer wheelbase and high-horsepower diesel engine as well as extra goodies like a 52-inch axle spacing, Mack 18-speed manual transmission and top-of-the-line Rawhide interior package.
This is a truck that looks good in shining black with a gold Mack Bulldog sitting proudly on the nose: Those in the know understand a gold Bulldog signifies an all-Mack power- and drivetrain on the truck: from the engine bay all the way to the rear axles.
