No, Ford Doesn't Own Mack Trucks — Here's Which Well-Known Automotive Brand Does

Mack Trucks, originally called the Mack Brothers Company, was founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 1900. That makes the truck brand 125 years old at the time of writing — although not among the five oldest car brands in the world, this still gives Mack quite a legacy. Interestingly, Mack was owned by its shareholders and operated as an independent company all the way until 1967, when it was acquired by the Signal Oil Company — an American company that started in the petroleum industry, but has since expanded to automotive and aerospace engineering, among other industries.

Renault's industrial vehicles division, Renault VI, acquired a 10% stake in Mack Trucks in 1979. And some 11 years later, it completely took over the truck brand in 1990, turning it into a fully owned subsidiary of the French automaker. After another 11 years, AB Volvo bought the entire Renault VI subsidiary in 2001, putting Mack Trucks, Inc. under its umbrella.

Because of this, you might think that Mack Trucks, Inc. is owned by the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the Chinese company that also owns Volvo cars. However, AB Volvo is a different entity from the car brand. While Geely is the second-largest investor in AB Volvo, owning 14.7% of the company's shares, the biggest shareholder is still Industrivärden AB, a Swedish investment firm with various holdings in different Nordic companies.

One reason why some people would connect Mack with Ford is that the latter bought Volvo in 1999. This Swedish car company was one of the brands that you might not realize Ford owned when it tried to build a portfolio of luxury cars under the Premier Automotive Group (PAG). However, as noted above, the Volvo car brand is a different company from AB Volvo, which makes Volvo trucks and also owns Mack. In fact, it was this $6.4-billion purchase that allowed AB Volvo to focus on making trucks and buy Renault VI, thus directly leading to its acquisition of the iconic American semi-truck manufacturer.

Despite Mack changing hands multiple times in the latter half of the 20th and the early part of the 21st century, the company kept on introducing advancements and innovations in the trucking industry — this helped make it one of the most popular semi-truck brands in the US. It released the Maxidyne engine in 1967, which delivered increased torque despite a decreasing engine speed brought by load. This was followed by the Econodyne engine in 1979, which offered improved fuel efficiency.

In 2010, it started offering the mDRIVE automated manual transmission or AMT (which we don't see much in the US). Further, it developed it into the 13-speed mDRIVE HD, offering low reduction creeper gear ratios in an automatic. Finally, the company introduced electric low-entry heavy-duty trucks in 2022, which were followed by medium-duty electric trucks the following year.