Mack Trucks Delays Decision on New Plant

Mack Trucks reached its self-imposed deadline Friday to decide on a location for a new truck plant, but company executives were still considering a union cost-reduction plan designed to persuade them to build here.

“I’m really not optimistic,” Jack Derry, an international representative for the United Auto Workers, said in a telephone interview. “But you can paraphrase Yogi Berra’s phrase, ‘It’s never over ‘til it’s over.’

“Our offer is in excess of $90-million savings to the company annually. It will stay on the table until the company gets in touch with us.”

A company-imposed deadline arrived Friday with no agreement between Mack, the nation’s No. 2 truck maker behind Navistar International (formerly International Harvester), and the UAW on cost reductions the company says it needs before it will build a new assembly plant in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.

5,000 Employees in Area

Mack has said it must close an 80-year-old plant here and build a new one, either in the South or, if it can get labor concessions, in the Allentown area. North and South Carolina and West Virginia have all reportedly been seeking the new plant.

There are 1,800 workers at the plant now, and the new, more automated plant will employ about 1,000, the company has said. Mack employs about 5,000 people in the Allentown area.

Mack spokesman William McCullough said Friday morning that the company had no further comment. Derry said he did not know when the company representatives would contact him.

UAW officials held a news conference Thursday to outline their proposal, which calls for Mack employees to invest up to 6% of their pay in Mack securities to help finance the new plant and to help modernize a Hagerstown, Md., plant.