Although Mack is an extremely recognizable name in the world of big rigs, few people know the company took a brief and commercially unsuccessful trip into the world of smaller trucks in the late '30s.
Few trucks were built and even fewer remain. One of the handful of well restored examples of the Mack Jr. is currently listed on Ebay, giving fans of the silver Bulldog a chance at a very rare truck.
It isn't a full sized commercial truck, but this 1937 Mack Jr. isn't nearly as small as the name might suggest. 4,974 Mack Jr. chassis were built to Mack's specification by the REO truck company of Lansing, Michigan between 1936 and 1938. Even though they were built elsewhere, the trucks were marketed as Macks and sold through the company's sales network.
As you can tell by the low sales numbers, Mack Jr.'s were far from a success with late '30s truck buyers. Although the trucks were well built and designed as workhorses, they were significantly more expensive than comparable models from better known small truck manufacturers.
74 years later few Mack Jr.s have survived which partially explains why the trucks are still significantly more expensive than comparable trucks from the same year. While this example is well restored and very rare, the asking price attached to is about five times as much as a truck in comparable condition from another manufacturer. With a little less than a day on the auction, no one has gone for the $165,000 opening bid.
[Ebay]