Mack's MaxRide Air Suspension: The Granite Trades Camelback for an Electronically Controlled Ride

For close to a century, the suspension underneath a Mack vocational truck meant one thing to anyone who has turned a wrench on one: Camelback. Mack's proprietary walking-beam rear suspension earned a reputation as one of the toughest mechanical systems in the industry, right alongside the Hendrickson walking beam it is most often cross-shopped against, and it is still working under plenty of Mack trucks hauling aggregate and demolition debris today. So when Mack introduced MaxRide Air on the redesigned Granite at ConExpo-Con/Agg 2026, it was not a minor spec update. It was Mack putting a genuinely different suspension philosophy on its flagship vocational chassis, and the honest comparison between the two systems is worth understanding before you decide which one belongs under your next truck.

Camelback Isn't Going Away

It is worth being clear up front that MaxRide Air is an addition to the Granite's suspension lineup, not a forced replacement. Mack continues to offer Camelback on the redesigned Granite and across other current chassis, which means this is genuinely a choice a buyer makes at the time of order rather than a decision Mack has made for you. That matters because the two systems are not simply an old option and a new upgrade, they are two different tools built for two different kinds of work, and understanding both well enough to ask for the right one is worth more than defaulting to whichever spec a dealer quotes first.

What Camelback Actually Is

Camelback is a mechanical walking-beam suspension, a design where a pivoting steel beam connects a tandem axle pair and lets each axle articulate independently over uneven ground while multi-leaf springs handle the load. It is a torque-reactive design, meaning the suspension itself resists some of the twisting force the drivetrain puts through the axles under hard acceleration or braking, which is part of why walking-beam suspensions have such a strong reputation in off-road and high-articulation applications like quarry haul roads and unimproved job sites. The tradeoff is ride quality. A mechanical leaf-and-beam system transmits more road shock into the frame and cab than an air suspension does, and that shock adds up over a ten-hour shift for a driver and over years of service life for the rest of the truck.

What MaxRide Air Changes

MaxRide Air is described by Mack as an advanced, non-torque-reactive vocational air suspension, electronically controlled with eight tuned airbags rather than a mechanical beam and leaf-spring stack. Mack calls it the most stable and best ride ever offered on a Mack truck, and the non-torque-reactive design is the key engineering distinction: instead of the suspension itself absorbing drivetrain torque the way Camelback's beam does, MaxRide Air isolates the frame from road input electronically, tuning each of its eight airbags independently to manage load and ride quality. Mack pairs that with the claim that MaxRide reduces driver fatigue and minimizes wear on both the driver and the equipment, which tracks with what air suspension has delivered on the highway-tractor side of the business for decades now finally reaching the vocational side in a purpose-built form.

Which Suspension Actually Fits Your Work

This is not a case where one suspension is simply better than the other across the board, and Mack is not discontinuing Camelback: it remains available on Granite and other current Mack chassis for buyers who want it. A demolition contractor running trucks over broken concrete and rebar on an active teardown site, or a site excavation outfit crossing unimproved ground to reach a cut, is still going to find a lot to like in Camelback's mechanical simplicity and its long track record surviving abuse that would beat an air system to death. A ready-mix hauler running mostly paved routes between a batch plant and job sites, or an aggregate hauler spending most of a shift on highway and secondary roads, is the buyer MaxRide Air is built for: smoother ride, less driver fatigue over a long day, and less cumulative wear on a frame and cab that spend most of their life on pavement rather than off it.

What Owning Each System Actually Costs You Over Time

Camelback's maintenance profile is well understood after decades in the field: walking-beam bushings, trunnions, and leaf springs wear on a predictable schedule, parts are widely stocked, and most Mack dealers and independent heavy-truck shops can service it without any special training. MaxRide Air introduces components most vocational technicians are less familiar with day to day: electronically controlled airbags, height-control valves, and the wiring and sensors that let the system tune itself. Air suspensions generally cost more to service when something does fail, since an airbag or a control module is a more specialized repair than a leaf spring, but they also tend to fail less often under normal highway-and-secondary-road use, and the reduced frame and cab stress can extend the service life of everything downstream, from cab mounts to the driver's own back. Neither system is cheaper across the board; the honest answer is that Camelback's costs show up as routine, predictable wear items, while MaxRide's costs show up less often but can be pricier per incident when they do.

The Driver Retention Angle Nobody Talks About Enough

Mack's own messaging around the redesigned Granite leans hard on driver comfort, and that is not just marketing filler. Finding and keeping qualified CDL drivers is one of the harder problems in this industry right now, and a truck that beats a driver up less over a ten-hour shift is a genuine retention tool, not a luxury feature. A driver choosing between two job offers where the trucks are otherwise comparable is going to notice which one rides better by the end of week one. For a fleet owner, that is a real business consideration sitting right next to the more obvious specs like GVWR and axle configuration.

Spec It Based on Where the Truck Actually Runs Most of the Time

The simplest way to make this decision well is to be honest about the split between paved and unpaved miles a given truck will actually run, rather than speccing for the worst single day it might ever face. A truck that spends ninety percent of its time on paved routes between a plant and a jobsite, with the occasional rough patch at the site itself, is still generally better served by MaxRide Air, because the suspension's daily environment should drive the decision more than an infrequent edge case. A truck that spends most of its time crossing genuinely rough, unimproved ground, with pavement only on the way to and from the site, is the stronger case for Camelback. Most fleets already know intuitively which category a given truck falls into; the value of this comparison is putting real engineering language behind that intuition when it is time to fill out a spec sheet.

A Note on Resale Value

Suspension choice also shows up later, when it is time to sell or trade a truck. A used Granite with a well-maintained Camelback suspension and a documented service history of heavy off-road use is an easy sell to another contractor doing the same kind of work, since the buyer knows exactly what they are getting into mechanically. A used Granite with MaxRide Air appeals more to a buyer running similar paved-route, ready-mix, or aggregate-hauling work who values the smoother ride and is comfortable with air-suspension maintenance. Matching the suspension to the work you actually do, rather than to whatever seems like the more modern option, tends to produce a truck that holds its value better in its specific used-equipment market.

What This Means When You're Financing the Truck

A rental company picks the suspension spec on the truck it hands you, and you take what is on the lot whether it fits your ground conditions or not. Financing your own Granite means you choose Camelback or MaxRide Air based on the actual routes and job sites your trucks run, and you keep that decision, and the equity building toward it, for the life of the loan instead of handing the truck back at the end of a rental term. If you are also weighing the redesigned Granite's other changes, our breakdown of Mack's mDRIVE HD transmission and our explainer on Mack's BodyLink IV electrical system cover the rest of what changed on this platform. And if suspension choice generally is still an open question for your next dump truck regardless of brand, our broader look at walking beam vs. air-ride suspension lays out the industry-wide version of this same tradeoff.

Ready to Put This to Work on Your Fleet?

Whether you're speccing your next dump truck, adding a mixer to a growing fleet, or just keeping tabs on what Mack and Freightliner are building next, BFC Equipment Loans works with contractors who'd rather own their equipment than keep feeding a rental company every month with nothing to show for it afterward. Ready to move on a truck? Start your equipment financing application and we'll walk you through it. Buying or selling used iron in the meantime? Check our equipment for sale marketplace. And if you want more breakdowns like this one before your next purchase, subscribe to the BFC blog for regular coverage of the equipment that actually moves dirt and pours concrete.