Australia then and now

What’s in the separate boxes/crates on these trailers.

Sorry oily, can’t help you other than it will be regular freight to and from the same site. Kalari specialize in bulk, high volume work.
Those trucks are probably servicing Olympic Dam mine.

Are they side tipping bulk trailers? Would a road train have hydraulic connections from a single PTO on the unit all the way back? Maybe the smaller boxes are housing engines for tipping gear on each trailer?

It depends, if you’re Indian, going forward in a straight line doesn’t seem to be part of the test.
All classes up to HA (heavy articulated/single trailer) are government tested.
An HA has to be held for 12 months before graduation to MC (multi combination). MC licenses are privately trained and assessed. What could go wrong there?
Foreign drivers arrive and convert their native licence to Australian. They then pay a private company to train and assess them, in four hours!
Many of the MC schools are owned by Indians. The major transport companies usually have contracted or in house trainers/assessors.
The whole system is wide open to corruption and pressure to pass everyone.

To be continued…

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You guys down under have got your first electric truck charging hub in Melbourne.

i wasnt being sarcastic i wondered if it was part of a series of maneuvers you had to accomplish. we all know an unsupervised for want of a better word single trailer can wander off on its own if your not on top of it so i assume 2 trailers will do it more.

here we have to do a single maneuver with in a prescribed area. for both my rigid and arctic license i was taught a series of steps to complete it hence out in the real world i didnt have a clue.

seems to me a series of tests or maneuvers in increasing difficulty would be a more benefical way of teaching someone

MC testing pt ll.
An Indian B double drive got himself lost and was heading into the Harbour tunnel. To his credit, he realised his truck was too high to fit and pulled up short of the tunnel. This caused minor traffic disruption so police and emergency response were scrambled.
A simple solution was devised where the ER would open a gap in the concrete divider, the truck would reverse back to it, police would stop all traffic then the truck could do a U turn. That plan quickly fell apart when the driver confessed that he couldn’t reverse the combination.
Plan B, split the trailers and reverse them one at a time. The driver had no idea how to disconnect the trailers!
Police then made investigations on how the bloke got a licence. It was revealed to the public that the driver was employed by a major, who employed/contracted their own assessor to churn new drivers through. The assessor would have been under pressure, with his role dependent upon him passing just about everyone.
Once revealed, the major threw the fellow under the bus, claiming they were squeaky clean, with no knowledge of the practice. Most of the majors operate in a similar way.
Look at the trailer wheels in the beginning of this video.

How far was that truck driven on flat tyres to do that much damage?
Again, an Indian driver. At the time the video and photos went viral on Facebook, forums, even the national news. The company defended the driver, saying he couldn’t find anywhere safe to stop. BS, it was the Newell Highway, I’ll guarantee you couldn’t travel more than 500 metres without finding somewhere to stop safely.
Suddenly all reference to that stupidity and gross incompetence disappeared from the internet.
You may wonder why, if these Indians are so incompetent, why are they employed. Simple, cost; in an industry that largely pays by the kilometre, having two or three drivers running the wheels off a truck, twenty-four hours a day makes bigger profits.
The companies employing these type of people are run by accountants, not transport mem.

Yeah I saw that. Are you sure there’s not a button on the dash that makes it do that? :grin:

Maybe on Euros, but I’ve never found one on a Star or Kenworth. :wink:

It’s Australian but beyond that I have no idea

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Aitkinson.

They should have exported them to here instead of using those fibreglass boneshakers , they may still have been in business. ……. I’ll just get my coat

Never been in one but saw plenty and I spoke to many who were not impressed. I think they were plastic and did not exclude dust from the interior, a major factor in the outback.

The Atkinson Oz cab was made out of GRP. Here is one that’s on the preservation scene in the UK chassis is just an Atkinson Borderer.

The same would have been said about th B Model, once the initial shine had worn off. You need to think about what the contemporary alternatives were.
The Aussie Big A was a premium truck later in its model life, fairly compared to K 100 Kenworth.

When I was with a group of drivers, including Noel, at Buntines probably just before the season got underway, a former driver of his arrived to show off his new forward control sleeper cabbed Mack. Everybody gathered around it in awe and admiration.

Then back to the tin legends. :rofl: Only Noel had an R model, a 6 wheeler with bogie drive, necessary in case the rest of us needed pulling through the rivers. :smirking_face:

D’oh! Of course it is.

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I knew you knew.

Some heavy WA stuff via keltez (Terry) on flickr

KW K220
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FH16 twin-steer prime mover:

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