Few equipment brand names outside of batch plants and plant and truck mixers have a connection as close to concrete as Mack Trucks Inc., a company celebrating 100 years in operation. Within that century of business, the concrete connection has been forged with tens of thousands of chassis shipped to generations of mixer, dump and bulk tanker truck operators.

For a company destined to have strong concrete ties, Mack Trucks could hardly have chosen a better headquarters: Allentown, Pa., within the Lehigh Valley and near the birthplace of the U.S. cement industry. However, Mack Trucks began business in New York City and delivered its first motorized vehicle, a Brooklyn park sightseeing bus, in 1900. Brothers Augustus, Jack and William Mack incorporated the following year and soon adopted Manhattan as a trade name. Production in Allentown was launched in 1905.

An identity established that year, Mack Brothers Motor Car Co., would evolve - along with a series of entities including International Motor and Saurer Motor - during the next 50 years to Mack Trucks Inc. Over than span, the company brought a host of innovations to the trucking world, including a cab-over engine model; constant-mesh/selective gear ratio transmission; air cleaners and oil filters; power and four-wheel brakes; and Mack-branded heavy duty diesel engines. Models included the AB, AC, and A, B and F Series. Since then, models suited to concrete and aggregate hauling have ranged from the the DM, R, RB, and RD Series chassis to the FDM Series and FCM Conquest front-discharge mixers.

Mack Trucks has published a 175-page photographical history book, "Mack: Driven for a Century," while dispatching a touring centennial trailer exhibit that acts as a mobile museum. Most company facilities and distributorships across North America will host open houses June 17-18 to spread the centennial celebration.

Mack Trucks has operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of French parent Renault V.I. since 1990. Renault took an initial 10 percent stake in the company 11 years prior, leading two other European automakers into the U.S. heavy truck industry as well.