Anyone else struck by this bit?

Mack was awarded the contract to build the truck in 1964 and by the end of the year, the unit was nearly ready to hit the streets of NYC.

Seems amazingly fast by current standards. Those were the days!

Think about all the processes they just didn't have to do back then.

just less massive amounts of waste, fraud and corruption

	▲	dmix 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		There was a senate investigation in Sept 2025 and it sounds a good case for an antitrust investigation: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Musharbash-T... Whenever there's market centralization the first question is why aren't upstarts taking over the market if there's such a backlog and high costs. Briefly reading into this, there's a large barrier to entry for fire engines in terms of extensive certification, local/state regulations, and the large emergency operations buying them need safe supply lines so they won't risk betting on newbies. You also won't easily find foreign suppliers to help fill the void (euro companies will focus on euro certifications). Plus you'd need to make deals with other mega-corp truck manufacturers and other specialized equipment. Combine that with 2008 financial crisis + flood of cheap capital, it was easy pickings for financialization/consolidation.