This is not really that "OLD" as I was working for a year before it was built!

[kshansen]

Came across these two pictures in an envelope yesterday while going through stuff at home.

They were taken in October 1992 when the truck was getting ready to be shipped to the quarry in Watertown NY after some major work was done. I tried to find a write up on it in my old files but think 1992 was before I had a computer at work to keep files on.

Truck is a 1969 Mack M30X1349. As I recall it had a NTA380(?) Cummins with an Allison CLBT5860 transmision. Brakes were straight air front drums with air over hydraulic rear drums.

This truck saw service in several of the quarries in New York State over the years. Hauled it's last load of stone for the company right here in Skaneateles NY. What finally put it out of service was the flex-plates that connected the engine to the transmission failed. It sat for a couple years and then was sold at auction, I believe to someone in Ohio who was hoping to fix it and use it to haul dirt out of a pond he was building.





Did a little more looking and found this picture, notes say it is 20227, which is the twin to the one in the two pictures above. The one in the third picture is the one with the failed flex plate, not the nice shiny one above. It is shown being loaded on the trailer to start it's trip to it's new home where I hope it was able to be fixed and get back to doing the work it was built for back in 1969!

 

[Jonas302]

Stayed in pretty good shape considering the amount of hard work it did

 

[mowingman]

We had an old Mack M20X at the quarry I worked at in 1980. Our's had a Mack engine in it though. It was our stockpile truck at the crusher, and, we still used it as a backup for the quarry haul, if one of our R22 Eucs was down. It was a tough old truck.

 

[kshansen]

Well I recall doing quite a bit of body work on those old Macks over the years. Seem to recall the one in the last picture had some major damage to the right side of the cab. I believe it was either backed into by another haul truck or it ran into the back of one. Anyhow recall having to do some major repositioning of the windshield frame and right side door frame to get things to work again.

The nice shinny truck in the top two pictures is as it was in 1992 when it was 23 years old and the truck on the trailer it twin is as it looked at 36 years old.

Back in the days when the Central Shop was going full steam we did do some major repairs on the equipment and it was nothing to strip one of these old trucks and repair it to near new condition. The shop you see in the back ground of the last picture is where most of this work was done. Wish I had some pictures of the M65 M50 Macks we had back then. They made these M30's look like little Chevy pickups! The company actually owned a Mack dealership in Pennsylvania for several years so we did have a good number of the off-highway Macks. Everything from M15 up to M65's

 

[RonG]

I used to haul trap rock out of New Haven Trap Rock back in the '70s and '80s at their New Britain quarry and they had some of those Macks along with their Euclids and I would see them keeping the bins down sometimes when I was in for a load or waiting my turn on the scales.I am pretty sure that I saw the Cummins sticker on them though and at that stage of my life I didn't know that Mack made bigger engines to power such things.Ron G

 

[lantraxco]

Ohio and pond probably equals Mike Wagner but it could just my brain misfiring, lol.

 

[kshansen]

The M-15's we had came with the V-8 Mack engines, M-30's had the NTA-380-855 Cummins, M-35's had the KT1150 Cummins, M-50 and M-65's had 16V-71 Detroits

A little interesting thing about one of the M-65's at a quarry a few miles from where I work, same company. They had I believe 4 of them, quarry face was one side of a local road up a steep hill and primary crusher was on top of hill the other side of the road. Trucks ran down slope then made a 90º turn to the left before crossing the road. Company had a flag man at the crossing to stop car traffic when loaded trucks were coming down the hill. Right on the outside of the 90º turn there was a deep ditch for drainage for an Interstate Highway By-pass under construction. There was a good sized berm on the road side of the ditch.

This day the loader topped off one truck and hit the bank for another bucket of shot rock for the next truck waiting to be loaded. When he backed out with full bucket he happened to notice oil on the ground where the last truck had been parked. He dumped his bucket and took off after the truck but the 16V-71 was too much for the H-400 with the 1710 Cummins. As truck crested the top of the hill to start down the grade driver flipped on the retarder of the DP8000 Allison transmission. Those retarders worked great, I personally had rode with these trucks several time down that grade and truck would crawl done at a slow walk. Well as luck would have it this trip the hose that failed was one of the large hoses from the retarder valve to the transmission cooler! Probably took a couple seconds to empty all the oil, retarders don't work too good on air alone! I did not mention the brakes on those trucks even when working perfect could not really stop a loaded truck going down that slope!

One more detail, in this ditch at the bottom of the grade there were two or three guys working in the deep ditch. They were used to hearing the big Macks coming down the hill everyday but story is they knew something sounded different this time and decided it was time to move somewhere else fast! I'm sure the truck driver was hard on his brakes but the total of over 130 tons of truck and payload they were not going to be enough!

When front wheels hit the berm the impact knocked the front axle right out from under the truck. This dropped the front bumper down in to the ditch and the truck did a forward flip landing completely inverted on top of the load of shot rock. Don't recall but I'm thinking the driver was following company reg's and had his seat belt on as he managed to survive with only some major bumps and bruises, don't think any bones were broke. Probably had a hangover from the beer he probably drank after leaving the ER!

They brought the truck to our shop I don't recall everything that we had to fix but we did get it back to work. I know motor, transmission, axle and just about any other mounts were damaged. The thing that took the longest about the repair was the fact that they had three other of these trucks at that plant and every time we got on component repaired and installed on the wrecked truck we would get a call saying "We need a planetary, we need a diff, we need a transmission" Probably assembled that truck three times while it sat on the shop floor. Then some bosses wanted to know why we took so long to get the job done!

 

[RonG]

Good story Ken.If we could just remember all the things that we witnessed or had happen to us over our career.Thanks,Ron G

 

[mitch504]

The steel mill here used a few of those (M20s, I think) as pot carriers. They pulled huge lowboys with the pots on them. Back in the '80s, I was foreman for a company that used highway end-dump trailers to move iron ore from the docks to the stockpile. One of our drivers parked his loaded truck to eat lunch (at midnight). An M20 came by and sideswiped it, hooking the 3/4" chain hanging off the pot on the corner of the cab of our little bitty looking R-model Mack. I watched as it pulled that 90k truck about 50' with the brakes set, until the chain slipped off and caught the door and pulled it off. It pulled the cab of the R-model so far out of square all the glass popped out of the cab. I later jacked the cab back close enough to shape that I could screw plexiglass over the openings and put it back to work in the mill.

When I chased the pot carrier down, he hadn't even noticed the accident.

 

[kshansen]

Well another off-highway Mack story. This one was one of the M-15's. These were slightly oversized 10-wheelers with rear dump body similar to bigger off highway trucks. I was at our quarry south of Rochester NY doing some work and was done for the day and talking to Sam the mechanic for the plant standing by the shop. The second shift was getting going and the driver of the M-15 was using it to stock stone on a big stock pile, probably 30 feet tall. Ramp went up the pile about half way then made a 90º turn down to the bottom.

Sam says "Look at that fool, he forgot to lower his box!" Truck was heading down the first ramp then made the 90º right turn on to the lower ramp. All the time running flat out with that V8. We were both surprised that it took the turn with out tipping over. Then Sam says "OH sh!t, He's head right for the high power lines!" Sure enough driver caught the high voltage lines that feed the power to the secondary part of the plant with the cab protector and ripped them all down. Guess that finally got the driver attention and he stopped well clear of the downed wires. Sam asked him what he was thinking and driver said he had know idea the box was still up.

No damage to the M-15, but I'm sure company electricians got some OT replacing those wires! Don't think the driver got much more than a talking to as back in those days management did not seem to get too upset when someone screwed up. Now days if you make a mistake that costs $500.00 to fix it is automatic firing.