Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

The Trucks

Most Road-Train tractors, that’s what you call them in the U.S. are Macks or Kenworths, both makers have their tractors assembled in Australia with right hand drive. Most tractors have v8 engines, the engines are the same as used in the U.S. but are not smaller than 450 H.P. The gear boxes have a minimum of 13 gears, no lazy axle’s, and at least eighty thousand pound diffs plus double chassis rails.

We have twice the number of air tanks to handle the 3 or more 44 foot trailers. You will find that the tractors are a lot shorter than you use because we need them short to manoeuvre the trailers to hook up the 3 or more trailers, plus a short wheel base is stronger and their are other different changes that have to be made to make Road-Train specification. Of course you can not back up with 3 or more trailers too far, what we do is, the Road-Train is dropped at the depot and split up so each trailer can be delved to the final desertion.

Adelaide, South Australia

I work for Richmond Heavy Towing in the city of Adelaide in the state of South Australia. The city of Adelaide is on the coast line just 10 miles from the sea, all of the bigger towns or cities of Australia are on the coast . The hot and dry centre of Australia which is called the Outback is thousands of square miles most of it is what is called crown land and belongs to know one it is still undeveloped land that belongs to the government.

A lot of the Outback is cattle ranches, which we call cattle stations, these cattle stations are hundred’s of square miles each. The Outback is not good farm land its hot dry scrub very little water, most of the cattle drink at man made water holes, the water is pumped up from under ground wells by windmills.

These water holes are hundreds of miles apart so the cattle are moved around by Road-Trains theses Road-Trains are truck and trailers of 3 or more trailers all hook up together. Not only cattle are moved around the Outback all road fright is moved by Road-trains. I have been looking through my old photos and I realize that I do not have a good photo of one of our big wreckers hooked up to a Road-Train.

Wreckers for Road Trains

I have lots of photos of trailers rolled over and that would not be unusual for you but a photo of a big wrecker towing a 150 foot or more Road-train would be unusual. Even in Australia a photo of a wrecker towing a Road-Train would be unusual because Road-Trans are not allowed to come with in a hundred miles of our city except the northern city of Darwin but Darwin has only 60 thousand people were you are that would hardly be called a city.

A wrecker towing a Road-Train does not happen a lot. If it is a roll over we split the trailers up on their own, and if a Road-Train has broken down we are allowed to tow the Road-Train to the next town for safety then we unhook the trailers from the truck and we just bring the truck back to the city to be repaired.

How to become a Truckie

The first thing is that in Australia truckers are called truckies not truckers and the tractor is called a pri-mover not a tractor, a tractor in Australia is what a farmer uses to dig up his field to grow his crop.

To the question what kind of training to get a Road-train licensing,you have to be over 18 and you start with what’s called a TAFE course, that is held at a college. I am a old time driver that has not done this course but from what I have been told is, that you learn everything for how to tie ropes to how much air to put into tyres. (You notice we spell tyre different from you). After a person has passed the TAFE course you then have to do a heavy truck driving test on the road.

It is one thing to get a license but another to get a job driving a Road-Train,you have to get another permit from a company that will give you a job. It is a catch 22, no one will give you a job unless you have experience, so unless you know someone who will give you a go it is hard to find a job driving a Road-Train.

The best way to go is to start driving small trucks and do that for a number of years and then start driving bigger trucks as you go then someone will let you loose with a Road-Train there’s no quick way.

To be continued…