Mile Marker 35 – Doug Maney on Mack Bulldogs, Archives, and the Future of the Museum

We return to the Mack Trucks Historical Museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with curator and self-described caretaker of Mack history, Doug Maney. Surrounded by sound-absorbing cones in the semi-anechoic chamber, Doug explains how this former test lab became one of the most unique gallery spaces in trucking, and why every truck in it still starts, runs, and moves under its own power. Doug opens the doors to a behind-the-scenes world of 50 million pages of records, half a million photos, and shelves of film, slides, and microfiche that document more than a century of Mack innovation. From the vision of former president Zenon Hansen and the first small museum in Macungie to today’s expanded collection at the Mack Experience Center, he shows how preserving, digitizing, and protecting this material keeps Mack history available for engineers, marketers, restorers, dealers, and fans around the world. Doug discusses: -What it means to “keep Mack history safe” day to day, from scanning every new document before it hits a filing cabinet to maintaining an offline local network that protects irreplaceable films and records from hacks and ransomware. -The origins of the museum under Zenon C.R. Hansen, the return of the bulldog as a core symbol of the brand, and how a small municipal garage in Macungie grew into today’s independent 501(c)(3) Mack Trucks Historical Museum. -Keeping roughly two dozen vintage trucks, buses, and fire engines in running condition on site, rotating displays, leaning on volunteers, and why “it does not do them well to sit” if you want history to stay alive instead of collecting dust. -How trucks and archives “find” the museum through dealers, families, and collectors, the careful process of adding rare vehicles to a limited storage footprint, and Doug’s dream of a larger “Mack Main Street” style museum that would recreate dealerships from different eras. With stories of pallets from dealers, boxes from retirees, and long-sought documents discovered in drawers that have not been opened in decades, Doug shows that Mack history keeps expanding, and that every new artifact adds another piece to the story of how Bulldogs helped build the modern world.

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