I recently had the opportunity to meet Stephen Roy, the new president of North American sales and marketing with Mack Trucks. He replaces Kevin Flaherty, who recently retired. Flaherty always injected some life into Mack Trucks press conferences with his booming declarations of, ‘At Mack, we export trucks, not jobs!’

Of course, to serve in a senior capacity with a truck OEM, you have to be passionate about the brand you represent. The Mack people take that to a whole new level. And in this category, it seems Stephen is up to the task. “I’m passionate about the Mack brand and where we can go,” he said. “I’m 50 and I plan to do this for the next 15 years.”

So, what exactly does he hope to achieve over the next 15 years? As early as this year, Stephen said he wants Mack to surpass 10% market share, which will require it to grow its on-highway truck presence. “If we are going to improve share, we need to have a larger presence in the on-highway market,” he said. “With our backlog and the amount of activity we see now, there’s no reason Mack can’t be above 10% this year, with a vision to being much greater than that.”

Mack dealers have invested more than $300 million into their facilities since 2010, increasing bay capacity by 40%, growing their technician ranks by 50% and better training those technicians so that now one in four are top-certified Master Technicians. Interestingly, 60% of Mack dealers now forward after-hours calls to a corporate call center, so that customers can receive assistance around the clock. Mack is also focusing on reducing downtime, and is building a three-storey Uptime Center at its Greensboro, N.C. campus. As part of its new remote diagnostics program GuardDog Connect, Mack has geofenced each of its dealerships. It now plans to get involved when it determines a truck has spent too long at a dealership for service.

In addition to all this, Mack will today be relaunching its brand at the ConExpo construction show in Las Vegas. Check back to Trucknews.com for details on the relaunch as they become available. All in all, it looks like there’ll be a lot of activity at Mack Trucks in the months ahead as the company looks to boost its on-highway presence and grow its share of the Class 8 market.