ALLENTOWN, Penn.  – The Mack Masters Competition, a biennial event designed to evaluate participants’ knowledge of Mack’s service systems and procedures, has concluded with a new team earning the right to call themselves Mack Masters champions.

After several rounds of competition, including a comprehensive final challenge, the “Slackers” from CIT Trucks in Rockford, Illinois have been named champions of the second Mack Masters Competition. Team members include Jim Garner, Chris Zahara and father and son Tim Stahl and TJ Stahl.

One Canadian team made it to the finals — “Aftershock” from Commercial Truck Repair in Ontario.

“There’s nothing like competition to make the best even better, especially in today’s world of sophisticated trucks and components” said Jonathan Randall, senior vice-president, sales for Mack Trucks North America. “All of the teams demonstrated their commitment to superior service for Mack customers, but the team from CIT Trucks took it to a higher level. Congratulations to Jim, Tim, TJ and Chris on this great accomplishment.”

The 2017 Mack Masters Competition began this past January with early rounds of online challenges that tested competitors’ knowledge of Mack’s service systems and procedures. Nearly 2,000 individual participants on 457 teams from 16 countries took part, an increase of 80% compared to the inaugural Mack Masters. After competing in three rounds of online challenges, nine teams of finalists were selected.

The final round of the competition featured nine hands-on stations designed to challenge each team with a specific service situation that had to be completed in just 30 minutes.

Following the completion of a challenge, teams rotated to the next one until all nine were completed. Team results from all stations were tallied to determine the champion.

“These participants are the men and women who work tirelessly every day to keep our customers’ trucks on the road,” Randall said. “Mack Masters not only shines the spotlight on their tremendous efforts, but also gives us a chance to hear from them on how we can increase uptime for our customers by improving our own service processes.”