Despite the dangerous nature of their normal work environment, we can think of no more well kept and pampered working vehicles than fire trucks. With constant loving care being laid onto them by the guys at the fire house, they are always immaculate and being that their functionality can determine life or death along with how much or how little property destruction occurs, the health and well being of fire trucks is paramount. That is why this 1945 Mack looks like it basically rolled out of the factory yesterday. Yes, it has some bumps and bruises, some wear marks and other things but this truck could be used to fight a fire today and that is pretty awesome. We would not be fighting fires with it but rather driving it around, because that is literally how we roll.
One of the other neat things about fire trucks that holds true right up to the present day is that even though they may be outwardly similar, each and every one of them has been ordered to the customer’s specs and those specs vary depending on the jobs that need to be done. For example, this truck has a super low first gear. The crawler ratio was specified when the truck was built so firemen could walk next to the rig and spray out grass fires if necessary. This Mack has spent its life in the Bakersfield, California area and the lack of rust, rot, and badness is largely because of that.
The truck is powered by a big Mack six cylinder gasoline engine with dual ignitions (to make sure it was going to start). A fun fact is that if you wanted a Mack fire truck it HAD to have a gas engine in it all the way up to 1960. After that the diesels came along and took over but for decades a gas plant was the only one available in a Mack fire engine. We’re guessing this is somewhere around 500ci and 200hp (or less).
The last thing worth mentioning is that it seems kind of interesting/strange is that they had a Mack truck at all in Bakersfield. The big truck market was pretty divided up until the era that we’re talking about here. There were western truck makers and eastern ones, Mack being one of the eastern ones. You don’t see too many classic Macks of this vintage out west, especially ones that have lived their whole lives out there.
This is a stately looking truck. The long nose, prominent grille, and huge round fenders totally make it for us.
The truck is for sale now with no reserve. Someone is going to steal this sucker and we wish it were us!
Scroll down to see more photos of the truck and then hit the eBay link!
Oh hell yea!