A team from truck dealer CIT Trucks in Rockford, Illinois, have proven themselves tops when it comes to their knowledge of Mack’s service systems and procedures, winning the biennial Mack Masters Competition.

Members from the winning CIT Trucks team “Slackers” include Jim Garner, Chris Zahara,  Tim Stahl, and T.J. Stahl. They were named grand champions of the second Mack Masters Competition after several rounds and a comprehensive final challenge.

“There’s nothing like competition to make the best even better, especially in today’s world of sophisticated trucks and components,” said Jonathan Randall, senior vice president, sales for Mack Trucks North America. “All of the teams demonstrated their commitment to superior service for Mack customers, but the team from CIT Trucks took it to a higher level.”

The 2017 Mack Masters Competition kicked off in January with early rounds of online challenges that tested competitors' knowledge of Mack’s service systems and procedures. Nearly 2,000 individual participants on 457 teams from 16 countries took part. After competing in three rounds of online challenges, nine teams of finalists were selected, with one team representing each of Mack’s regions: Central, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and West for the U.S., plus Canada, Central America, Mexico and South America.

The final round of the competition featured nine hands-on stations designed to challenge each team with a specific service situation that had to be completed in just 30 minutes. Following the completion of a challenge, teams rotated to the next one until all nine were completed. Team results from all stations were tallied to determine the champion.

“These participants are the men and women who work tirelessly every day to keep our customers’ trucks on the road,” said Randall. “Mack Masters not only shines the spotlight on their tremendous efforts, but also gives us a chance to hear from them on how we can increase uptime for our customers by improving our own service processes.”

The other finalists were “Bergey’s Bulldogs” from Bergey’s Truck Centers, Souderton, Pennsylvania; “Mack Madison” from Nextran Truck Center, Madison, Alabama; “Master Slackers” from Bruckner’s Truck Sales in Dallas, Texas; “Big Macks” from Mountain West Truck Center in Salt Lake City, Utah; “Aftershock” from Commercial Truck Repair in Ontario, Canada; “Team Shareeza” from Massy Machinery Limited in Trinidad & Tobago; “Hermosillo” from Tractoremolques Del Noroeste in Mexico; and “Dream Team” from Mack Peru.