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.

Originally posted 2007-08-13 19:57:07.

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…

Originally posted 2007-08-11 16:09:05.

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