P J Willing

Around this time Wiley also traded his UD on one of Swishy's favourites an F12 Volvo to move the gear between jobs.

He also set up a mobile batch plant and concrete truck for batching on the remote jobs. This photo shows the batch plant on the way to a bridge job at Hughenden.

Trough the late 80s and 90s he bought rural property around Townsville and between contracts he did a few rural subdivisions, all with his own gear.

This is a tipper he bought for a contract, was ex Banana shire council, a 6 cyl neuss with a 13 speed. A great old workhorse.

New paint job on the ovlov and a float as the gear was getting bigger.

Inter water truck....gotta love the park brake!

This is building a drop structure on one of the subdivisions. The 3070 was one of mine.



This Leader was another water truck he setup, 175 cat and 13 speed, probably the roughest truck I have ever driven.

Some more photos of some of his job trucks keep surfacing.

A Daihatsu crane truck used on various jobs on the railway electrification project.

This F86 Volvo crane truck pulled a 34' bogie flat top and was used to transport and erect the masts on the height gauges on the railway electrification.

Another Inter tipper purchased for a civil job

Wiley also had a love of American cars, particularly of the Mopar persuasion. Over the years he owned a Mercury Park Lane convertible, a few Chev Impalas and Pontiac Parisiennes, A 72 Buick boat tail Riviera, as well as 60, 65, 68 and 70 model Dodge Phoenixes. Here is a pic of his last, a 64 Dodge Polara convertible, I of I triple black wit originally a 426 wedge. He sold this to brother Ken last year as he is no longer confident driving it.

Wiley "retired" a few times and eventually sold the civil and earthmoving side of the business to brother Ken about 15 years ago, and gave the property development away about 10 years ago. He turned 80 late last year and this is a photo on his birthday.

This is the cake my sister made him!

I hope you have enjoyed his history and photos, and hope it inspires others to post they're photos and stories of "ordinary" people and trucks. Once they are gone so is they're history no matter how interesting.

well done on the story collecting sharing and telling. Excellent reading, thanks.