Cooney Transport keeps moving forward with Mack Trucks

Legacies in Motion

How Cooney Transport Ltd and Mack Trucks keep heavy freight — and relationships — Moving Forward

Eighty years strong, this Ontario-based carrier leans into strategic scaling and heavy-spec Mack Pinnacles to stay responsive and reliable.

In a garage in Trenton, Ontario, a restored 1964 Mack B-61 sits polished and quiet. It doesn’t hit the road much anymore, but it still represents something bigger. For Adam Cooney, president of Cooney Transport, that truck is a reminder of where the company started and why Mack is still part of the story more than eight decades later.

“We’ve been buying Macks since the late ‘50s,” Cooney says. “They’ve always been known for durability, and that’s why we keep coming back.”

Today, Cooney runs a fleet of about 80 trucks. Around a quarter of them are Mack Pinnacle PI64Ts — day cabs and sleepers — set up for heavy-duty dry bulk hauling. These trucks move loads of cement, sand, and glass in four-five-axle and B-train tankers, pulling 40 to 43 tons at a time along the 401 corridor between Detroit and Quebec City. It’s demanding work. The loads are heavy, the schedule is tight, and the trucks need to perform without excuses.

Built for the job, and trusted by drivers

Cooney’s Pinnacles are spec’d specifically for that application, built to handle heavy payloads while staying within Canadian weight limits. Those specs don’t come off the shelf: they’re the result of a long-running partnership with Rick Ryer at Surgenor Truck Group.

“I work with Adam’s fleet manager,” Ryer says. “I put the specs together, and we sit and review them. He’ll indicate which features they like to use, and I tweak it accordingly.”

It’s a system that works. The trucks show up ready for the job — and the drivers notice.

One longtime owner-operator who swore he’d never drive a Mack changed his mind almost immediately. “Said it was one rear end staring at another,” Ryer recalls with a laugh. But after just two days in the Pinnacle, that driver called him back. “I’ve never driven anything this nice,” he told Ryer.

That kind of feedback doesn’t surprise Cooney. “Overall, I will speak to it — the drivers love driving the Mack,” he says. “They say they’re very comfortable. I don’t know in the last five years that we’ve ever had a specific issue with Mack that would cause us to rethink buying more of them. They’re doing their job, and they’re doing it well.”

A leaner fleet, with the right support behind it .

Years ago, Cooney close to 300 trucks. But after the 2008 recession, and again during COVID, the company made a strategic shift. They downsized, focused their routes, and streamlined operations. Today, they’re lean by design — and more efficient than ever.

With just a small office staff, the company supports a fleet running daily across Ontario, Quebec, also seasonally in western Canada and the U.S Great Lakes. That kind of setup depends on equipment that holds up and a dealer that’s ready when needed.

“The responsiveness we get from Rick and the Surgenor team makes a huge difference,” Cooney says. “We don’t have a big staff, so we depend on equipment and service that don’t slow us down.”

Surgenor’s Kingston location handles preventive maintenance and delivers parts daily. And when trucks are in the shop, Cooney uses Mack ASIST to stay up to speed on repairs and communicate in real time.

“They get updates while trucks are in the shop and calls from Mack OneCall if there’s an issue,” Ryer says. “That kind of visibility makes a difference.”

The partnership runs deep. Cooney and Ryer still meet regularly — often over breakfast — to stay ahead of business needs and keep things moving.

A reputation that rolls on

For Cooney, Mack trucks aren’t just tools. They’re part of the company’s identity and reputation. Customers recognize that, and so do drivers.

“It’s our ability to respond to customer needs with the quality of our equipment, and the way we’re able to keep that quality where it needs to be, that comes from partnering with companies like Mack,” Cooney says. “When you pair that with a family-run business that’s been around for 80 years, people in the industry recognize it. Mack helps us be successful.”

That commitment to quality shows up across generations of equipment. While Cooney still has a vintage Mack B-61 tucked away in the garage, the story today is about evolution. The company’s latest trucks — including a newly spec’d 2025 Pinnacle — carry that same durability forward, built for modern loads and today’s drivers.

The names on the trucks may stay the same, but the business keeps moving forward. And for Cooney, so does Mack.

By the Numbers – Cooney & Mack