Mack plant in Lower Macungie to build electric garbage trucks
The Bulldog has gone electric. Mack Trucks on Wednesday announced plans to start taking orders in the fourth quarter for the Mack LR Electric, a fully electric garbage truck that spits out zero emissions and operates quietly. The truck will be manufactured at Mack’ s assembly plant in Lower Macungie Township, which employs about 2,230 people and builds all heavy-duty Macktrucks for North America.
Deliveries of the Mack LR Electric should start in 2021.
“Mack’s leadership in the refuse segment goes back more than a century, and we’re pleased to build on that heritage today by announcing the commercialization of the LR Electric model ,” Mack President Martin Weissburg said. “This clean, quiet and powerful truck demonstrates the very best of Mack innovation and our people, and I couldn’ t be more proud to announce our plans to build it.”
The news comes after Mack in January showed off the truck at its test track at the Mack Customer Center in Allentown. There, the manufacturer unveiled a Mack LR Electric that was headed to the New York City Department of Sanitation, a tough proving ground at a department that typically collects 10,500 tons of garbage along with 1,700 tons of recyclables daily.
Department spokesperson Joshua Goodman said Wednesday that the truck is in the testing phase, and the city plans to share more about it next week during Climate Week NYC.
Mack’s LRElectric, introduced as a prototype in 2018, has a fully integrated electric powertrain
“This clean, quiet and powerful truck demonstrates the very best of Mack innovation and our people.”
— Martin Weissburg, Mack president
with twin electric motors and four lithium-ion batteries, providing vehicle propulsion. The vehicle hasaregenerative braking system, in which the operator lifts a foot off the gas pedal to stop the vehicle while the kinetic energy lost during deceleration is converted to stored energy in the battery — a useful feature when thinking of the hundreds of stops garbage trucks make.
And a Mack wouldn’t be a Mack without a Bulldog on the front. The Mack LR Electric will have a copper Bulldog ornament mounted on the front of each truck, a nod to the fully electric drive line.
“The LR Electric is paving the way toward widespread acceptance of zero-emissions refuse trucks,” Weissburg said. “As we begin delivering them to customers in the coming year, we remain committed to ensuring these trucks are built to meettheunique needs of the refuse industry.”