P J Willing

My father recently turned 80, and at his birthday party we were looking at some of his old photos, many old trucks and machinery involved, and I thought some of you may be interested to see this history. P. J. Willing (Wiley to his family and mates) is no Ken Thomas or Lindsay Fox, but a knockaround type of bloke who came from an era when all you needed to get ahead was a nod from the bank manager and a good old dose of the Aussie have a go mate! He was a formwork carpenter by trade and started in business with a 3 ton jailbar Ford truck and some fencing contracts around Sydney. He went on to various building jobs and had a contract to build BP service stations in the early 60s. While involved with service stations he saw a niche market that involved removing waste engine oil and contaminated fuel from the underground tanks, and started a business removing and recycling this waste product. This involved buying tankers and storage tanks and the oil was stored, blended with other waste products and resold as furnace or bunker oil.

Almost got the picture right :silly: After many old shirtboxes he lashed out and bought a new D series Ford, he reckoned it was a fantastic truck, always overloaded due to the Gcm being downrated to keep it under the roadtax threshold...(truckies didn't do that did they?) and made him a lot of money

After wearing out a few old Bedfords and a 56 F500 V8 petrol, in about 1968 Wiley lashed out and bought a new C1800 ACCO with a Perkins and 5x2. The Perkins dropped a bigend while quite new and turned Wiley off Perkins engines for life. I recall him shuddering when salesmen were trying to sell him anything Perkins powered! That appears to be brother Dave in the co-pilot seat aged about 4

1970 and business was booming, Wiley needed bigger gear and set up this bogie tanker with a C1800 prime mover with a 345 petrol V8 and 5x2 transmission. Trucks were running all Sydney metro area, and venturing into the urban areas when required.



Mum is sending me a heap more photos tonight, I will sort and scan them and try to keep them in chronological order.

Thanks Ozfury for sharing these old photos and the story behind your dads trucks.
Ray

Thanks for the interest guys. In the early 70s environmental issues started to impact his business, (spraying dirty sump oil on council controlled gravel roads was coming to be seen as unhealthy) with storage of the waste products above ground becoming a contentious issue. A competitor made him an offer he couldn't refuse and he sold the business. He then went into property development and got involved with relocating houses onto acreage blocks on the outskirts of Sydney. This in turn led to him buying his housemovers' trucks and equipment which comprised of a couple of wartime blitzes and an R160 prime mover with a 6 cyl petrol engine.





The red Blitz was a Chev with a 6 cyl and a huge mid mounted winch. The Blitz crane was a Ford with a side valve V8.

Sorry about the photo of photo quality, we couldn't get them out of the old albums without destroying them. Anyhoo....what happens when you meet the opposition going the other way!

Keep them coming please

The R160 was brely capable to do the job so Wiley purchased a Studebaker 6x6 from the government auctions, fitted a turntable and used it as a "heavy duty" prime mover.

Not a bad load for a 2 and a half ton truck with 86hp! That's me on the roof lifting wires aged about 13, OHandS would love it!