Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

The Money The Wages are not too bad for Australian’s around 700 a week the average wage in Australia is about 500 a week in Australian Dollars the Australian dollar is less than the U.S. Dollar.

The good part of doing the job is there is no boss looking over you shoulder and every trip is different. You are so far away you have to do your own thing ,you have to be a jack of all trades if the truck stops you have to try and get it going by yourself, help is hundred’s of miles away.

The bad part of the job is that you have a time table to keep up with and you are paid only when you are working. If you breakdown and have to wait for someone to come out hundred’s of miles to get you going you do not get paid for the waiting time, a good time to catch on your sleep.

All the photos I have taken my self, I am not the best at taking photos, you can use any of my photos as you like. I will be happy to answer your questions. Most trucks these days are air conditioned and some trucks have small fridges.

Drivers

There are two types of way the trips are done, most transport company’s use two drivers for each truck. Each driver takes turn driving and the other driver sleeps in the sleeper cab of the truck. Most drivers are on the road for two weeks then have a week off.

The other type of driving is the owner driver, these drivers drive as many hours as they can twenty hours a day have a short sleep then off again. Driving the long trips are a very basic life style there is not much to do but drive eat and sleep.

Most drivers that a company drivers get 4 weeks payed holidays, but the owner drivers can not afford this so they just keep going.

All Australian workers get a government pension at 65, but most truck drivers stop driving when they are about 45, by then they have had a gut full of the lifestyle.

Some Problems Driving Trains

The normal gross of a road train is 115 tonne,but their are some road trains used in the mining game that gross 180 tonne.

The main problem specific to Road-Train is blowing truck tyres, if a car is passing a road-train when a tyre blows it’s like being shot by a bullet and a Road-Train can not stop. If there is livestock on the road, which happens all the time we can not stop in time, that’s why we have those big bull bars on the front of the trucks.

Another big problem is drivers falling asleep at the wheel but most of the time they just run off the road and there is not much to hit so the driver just pulls back onto the road.

Towing Trains

Part of our job is to tow the longest trucks on earth the Australia Road-train over one hundred and fifty feet long and more than one hundred tonne of load.

The Australia Road-train is the longest truck you will find driving on every day normal highways.

A large part of our Company’s work is to drive thousand’s of miles into the Outback of Australia and tow these massive rigs with there three or more forty four foot trailers, and tow them hundred’s of miles to the nearest town where we unhook trailers so we can take the rig hundred’s of mile to the big city’s in the southern part of Australia to be fixed.

There are mobile workshops that go hundred’s of miles into the Outback to fix the small jobs but if a rig blows a motor or gearbox there’s no other way but to send a big wrecker into the heart of the Outback of Australia.

Because of the small population of our large state’s were most of the people live near the sea the hart of Australia is almost empty of people so there is very little traffic and very few highways not like the U.S. You can drive hundreds of miles and see just a hand full of cars in fact you see more rigs than cars.

A lot of freight has to go by road transport. As there’s not the traffic of the U.S. there is not enough work for big wreckers in the small towns of the Outback so that is why we are stationed in the big city,our company would only do one big Outback job every two weeks but one of these long jobs takes two or more days.

History of Road Trains

The Australian Road-train was developed just after WW2 the rigs were old U.S. army rigs mainly diamond T’s. there was no limit to the number of trailers you could pull in those days the trailers were only twenty foot long,they towed six to eight trailers at a time it used to take half an hour to get to a top speed of thirty miles per hour and to stop there were no brakes you just took your foot off the pedal and waited for it to stop on its own.

Today most of the Road-trains are three forty four foot trailers and travel at sixty miles per hour and they have full air breaking system. I have spent a lot of time making a web site about big rig towing in the Outback as well as lot of photos of Australian Road-train plus lots of photos of the wreck we clean up hundreds of miles away from our depot in the city.

Now I will answer your questions.

How many Kilometres do we drive a day?
We drive about one thousand kilometres a day this takes around fourteen hours, you have to keep in mind that we do not have many little towns to go though we drive hundred;s of kilometres between towns and no big highways with lots of cars. I never worked out how many kilometres we drive a year but we do a lot.
How fast do we drive?
There is a speed limit for all heavy trucks of one hundred kilometres per hour, but most drivers do about one hundred a ten kilometres per hour. As we are in the middle of no were their are not many police to stop you, plus there is no speed limit on cars at all.
How many days do we work?
Most drivers work on a two weeks driving and one week off at home. Each day we drive about fourteen hours with short half hour stops about every five hundred kilometres.
Where do drivers sleep?
Most drivers sleep in the sleeper cabs of the truck
These days a lot of trucking companies run what we call two up, that’s were each truck has two drivers one will drive wile the other driver sleeps in the sleeper cab of the truck.
What sort of problems do we have?
The worse problem we have driving in the Outback is hitting wild animal and livestock. If you look at a photo of our truck you will see the big bull bars on the front of the trucks. We hit lots of Kangaroos which can be as tall as a man some people think they are small, but they will do a lot of damage to a car or truck. There are more kangaroos now than there was a hundred years ago, because water is pumped up from under ground to water cattle so the kangaroos have bred like wild fire.
Cattle. The problem with cattle is that the cattle station (ranchers) are so big, hundreds of square miles each they don’t have fences so the cattle can be standing in the middle of the highway. Driving at night is not a good idea because you never know what’s in front of you, but if you have a bull bar its not too bad.
Is a trucker a lonely man?
Most trucks have a CB radio so you can talk between trucks this way drivers can help each other out by letting everybody know of what’s ahead like kangaroos on the road and if their are police around so they can watch their speed. Most Road-Trains drive in convoys of about six trucks. When drivers stop for a break at a truck stop most of them know each other.
What about a truck drivers family life?
There are family men on the long hauls, they are doing the long hauls to get the money to buy a house. The company like the family men they seem to have more sense and they do a good job. Most of the younger single men do the short trips between the eastern city only about seven hundred kilometres a trip, so they have more time to party.
What do you like about the job?
The best thing about the job is the freedom,you are out their on you own and its up to you to sort things out for your self. That’s the best thing about towing Road-trains is when we get a accident rollover and its up to me to sort out the mess and to get the wrecked truck hundreds of kilometres back to the big city to be repaired.

Kingsley Foreman… my web site outbacktowing.tripod.com