The CF Pumper was Mack’s “top of the line” fire series and would become one of the most popular cab forward apparatus ever made. Over the course of 23 years, Mack would manufacture 3,849 CFs in their Allentown and Macungie, Pennsylvania plants.
A little way down the road from Macungie and 25 miles North of Boston is Lawrence, Massachusetts, where the fire department ran one such Mack. Known as the “Immigrant City”, Lawrence has always been a multi-ethnic and multicultural gateway city with a high percentage of foreign-born residents. The successive waves of immigrants coming to Lawrence to work in the mills began with the Irish, followed by the French Canadians, Englishmen, and Germans in the late 1800s.
Notable for its time, every CF series that hit the streets did so with air brakes and power steering.
Up until 1973 gasoline engines were optional and then diesel became the standard for Mack and most all fire apparatus manufacturers. This model, a Mack CF for Lawrence, makes its debut in the non-traditional lime-on-/lime paint scheme.