Familiar face and truck

NMP courtesy of website “Stories of the road museum.”

Where are my royalties?

Things must of been good back then, someone could afford a razor

Paul

Wasn't old enough for face fuzz.

Lang I think it's only fair that you should get royalties.
Once the royalties are deducted from fines for overloading on the trailer, overheight on the drive, probably oil leaks and all sorts of shenanigans in the log book, you should owe, oh, only a few thousand dollars???
What was the story on that load? Where from,. where too, how much weight was on the drive...? ?etc..

Wash your mouth out. This is a Commer, British vehicles don't leak.

I think I told the story about 5 years ago, pretty amusing, but will do it again if you are keen. Let's just say you can see the bend in the Fruehauf trailer from 20 ton of International tractor. I would guess only about 15 ton (plus the trailer weight) is on the trailer axle.

Lang

The Story.

I had a standard trip from Melbourne to Perth on the train carrying ???. Once unloaded waited for the Hartridge depot bloke to send me off for a return load (usually at prices just enough to cover costs going Eastbound). Unfortunately Ron Hartridge picked an absolute dud to run his Perth depot, unlike all his other great depot managers. After a week with the yard getting more crowded with trucks waiting for a load I started looking around myself.

Finally somebody told somebody told me ISAS had an International tractor to go to Adelaide. I fronted up to the office and they hardly raised an eyebrow as I backed my single axle up to the ramp. Expecting a rubber tyred machine to arrive I s..t myself when this rattling monster appeared, Nothing ventured nothing gained - carry on regardless. I placed old railway sleepers down to protect the deck on my nice new Fruehauf trailer and on she went. I must admit I started to worry when I saw that supposedly unbreakable "I" beam bending. With all my 18 year old experience I was going to put the 20 ton tractor further forward but stressed over permanently bending the trailer (it did put a noticeable bend in the side coaming).

After chaining the tractor down they said they would give me an extra $200 to take a conveyer "that did not weigh much" as well. Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound. I think I got excited about the money until I realised that we had changed to decimal currency two days before and a pound was now only worth half as much.

The old Perkins sailed us through the night to the train at Kalgoorlie. Once surrounded by more experienced truckies the load raised eyebrows, so to speak.

Another great train trip saw us arrive in Port Augusta early morning. One of the railway blokes came up to me and said the Transport Inspectors had been in earlier asking about the truck with the bulldozer as reported by their spotters somewhere back on the Nullarbor.

The railway yard foreman came down after all the trucks were unloaded and fled towards the East. I was in a quandary as more than one person told me the scalies were waiting at the weighbridge on the edge of town asking about me.

He said "The bastards can not stay out all night. Follow me" So into the engine maintenance shed I went with just enough room between the wall and the parked locomotives. Twice during the afternoon the Transport Department car did a lap of the yard but the railway blokes did not let on.

Towards dark a cab came into the yard to drop off a passenger and by this time all of Port Augusta were following the cat and mouse game. The cab driver was an ex-truckie and told me his shift did not finish until midnight so for me to just sit pat and he would check the weighbridge on the end of town and report back every hour or two.

About 1230 in the morning the cab appeared and said "The bastards have got sick of waiting and closed the bridge. Let's go!" He told me to drive down various back streets and wait before entering the highway to let him do one last check to see there was no ambush. Ten minutes later, flashing headlights and a thumbs-up through the window and I was away flat as a strap to get into Adelaide before the sun came up.

Unloaded at ISAS yard, on to the much more efficient Hartridge yard at Port Adelaide and I was home in Melbourne before breakfast the next day.

Lang

Awesome story....hmmm "British vehicles don't leak" .... I had a Gardener 6LXB in my old Atkinson that leaked far more oil than it used.. The complete underside of the truck and trailer was covered in like "felt", which was where all the dripping oil mixed with the dust and more oil and more dust...meaning any time yo got under the truck, (often) you instantly turned black..
That load must have made the old Jerkins work hard eh? 6354, 120HP weren't they? We sent a perkins powered AB Inter tray to Brisbane once, loaded with a CAP crane, my brother driving, (no truck license of course), I followed him in my Atkinson, I can honestly say that the AB was one of the very few trucks that I actually overtook on the road.
The brother loaded a bogie drive Transtar on the back in Brissy to come home, he got pulled up in the Pilliga by a copper who wanted to know why he was going so slowly, the cop couldn't believe it when brother told him it was flat out.. Then he asked for his license, and log book- "log book? Whats a log book? And what on earth do I need a truck license for, I've been driving trucks for years!"
Not sure if he got a ticket or not, but certainly different times...
Cheers
Rich

What, an English vehicle leak oil? What are you talking about
Many moons back when I went out to do a surf patrol one of the other members I knew had bought a new Truimph bike. When he parked it up I went straight out with a sheet of newspaper to put under it. I was not popular all day.

The reason you were not popular was probably because you failed to point out that to have an automatic rear chain oiler was a good idea.