Highly acclaimed Mack authority Harvey Eckart has done a masterful job of covering Mack’s Model B fire trucks. As he notes in the introduction, it was one of the company’s most successful with “slightly less than 1,000” produced. Published in 1997 and typical of the early Photo Archive series titles, the book’s captions are brief and limited to the model designation, the date built, and a mention of some specific detail. The book does an admirable job of showcasing Mack Model B fire trucks through the rich variety of 120 black-and-white photographs from the Mack Trucks Historical Museum, the author, and other private collections noted in the acknowledgements. Of particular interest are the 40 fire trucks featured in multiple views on separate pages offering the standard 3/4-angle view and additional photographs of the rear, the engine, cab interiors, or the pump panel that affords a chance to examine the controls typical of the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s. The book also provides 10 pages, each featuring two side views of fire trucks. One additional image provides the list of standard equipment fitted to the Model B and C (cab forward) pumpers from the 1961 Mack sales brochure titled The Story of Mack Fire Apparatus.

Book Review by Robert Gabrick