Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

Trucks have to be made to Road-Trains standards with outgoing into lots of details, that would take all day – The chassis are made stronger with more cross-members and the chassis are not allowed to be too long so you do not have room for big sleeper cabs. We have to double the number of air tanks plus more fuel tanks on both sides, there’s more but I don’t have time to go into.

Why Road Trains

The reason we have Road-Trains in Australia is that Australia is about the size of the U.S.A. but most of our people live within ten miles of the sea in a handful of cities. The inland of Australia is made up of a few cattle ranchers we call cattle stations they are hundreds of square miles in size but because the land is so dry and there is not much water there are few cattle spread over a lot of land,most of the land is still unused government land.

We do not have freeway’s from coast to coast. The number of cars are few and the roads are narrow with one lane in each direction when you get two trucks passing each other they are only feet apart.

So with thousands of miles of road between the city’s and no hills to cross Road-Trains make good sense the normal Road-Train is made up of three 44 foot trailers with a twin axle turn table dolly under the front of the trailer hooked up to the back of the trailer in front of it with a ring feeder and a dolly bar the load is 115 tonne spread over the three trailers.

As I have said the normal Road-Train is of three trailer but in the mining game they haul six trailer or more.

Climate in Australia

What’s the scenery and the climate like? It is very large but it is the reverse to you December is the start of our summer so Father Christmas is pulled by kangaroos not reindeer. In the south the climate is summer and the hot and dry average temp is about 95 F with a lot of days over 100 F. In the winter it is mild, I have never seen snow. The north has just two season the wet and the dry with an yearly average of 95F the middle of Australia is all ways dry and hot.

As to what you see driving in Australia near the coast there is normal farm land but in the Outback you do not know what you will see next,at night there are lots of kangaroos they are heavy on most roads that’s why are truck have big bull bars on the front of the trucks it is not unusual to hit 2 or 3 on one trip they can do more damage than you think.

In the day you see a lot of wild life birds big eagle’s and falcons Emus which are big flightless birds, snakes and wombats which are bit like a fat dog, dingo’s all sorts of Australian wild life.

Driving Regulations

You can drive 4 hours with out stopping then you must stop for half of one hour and you can not drive for more than 12 hours in one day,but most driver break regulations every day driver’s have a log book to fill out. These days a lot of trucking companies run two drivers to each truck so one drives and the other rest that way they go straight though.

Truck stops in the Outback

Where do we stop and fuel? Most trucks have fuel for at lease one thousand miles because as you leave the big city’s on the coast and head into the outback the price of fuel goes up and it makes a big different to the price. There are truck stops every 400 miles apart most of these a small compared to yours. They seat ten or so people, the food is home style cooking, steak and eggs plus burgers and fry’s what we call chips, simple food like that, not conveyor belt food like McDonalds they’re for the cities.

The truck stops or what we call Road-House’s are normally like little light house’s in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes there might be a little one horse town but most of the time they’re on their own. There are only a hand full of stops in thousands of kilometres trip.