transport books

After seaching for many years for any book on semi-trailer buses a lady at the Adelaide library gave me Greg Travers address and I corresponded with him about the subject, I traded him a journal I had written for my daughters for one of his books on Australian articulated buses, there are no prizes for guessing who got the best deal! Well, it is the best account ever written on the subject down to every detail and loads of great pictures, I have always been fascinated by semi-buses probably from driving this one as a youngster, taking school children out on picnics or offsiding on the Darwin run if we had too much freight and few passengers, we had no freight trucks until we built our own, swishy probably correct in the law stepping in, or passengers likeing to see who was driving them. If ever I fly commercial I like to see the pilot : the greatest books on transport are those by Jack Maddox or Kurt Johannsen, One of my daughters, knowing my great interest in reading truckies stories of life on the road bought me for xmas a book of the best Australian trucking stories. I quickly grabbed a cold one and a quiet place to read, well, this book is the sorriest piece of work I have ever seen, completely self promoting by someone with no experience in trucking, mostly all about show people loosely connected to the transport industry, long drawn out stories by Lez Martin about the Government road train and Vesty's which have been written about so many times they are known by heart, a few incidents that are everyday occurances, giving someone a tow, about getting a ticket for some trivial act, a terrible truck accident that left much to be explained, which is why I believe that if the stories and pictures on these forums were edited and printed they would be a best seller for the Tarcutta museum, stories that stay in your memory like when sailorV one cold night came across a hitch hiker fallen off the back of a truck unconcious in the midle of the road, not having a blanket Peter lit spinefex fires around him to keep him warm, waiting with him until daylight when help came along to take him for medical care. or an extract from George Bush's book, quote: So dick Cheney explained to me how we could start a war just so we could funnel billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to his company, Halliburton, and realize obscene, windfall profits off the increased stock price. I said to him "Dick, are the the Press and the American people going to stand for something like that?" And he just laughed and laughed and laughed, and pretty soon, I was laughing too, genuine touching yarns, so one has to very careful about the scam artists out there to make a quick dollar by cunning advertising a product that has no real content

Well after having read a fair bit of your lierary masterpiece Ron, I reckon it was a pretty good read too.

There are a lot of great truck and transport books that have been written in and about Australia that have been well reseached or relate to direct personal experience. The only pity is that they are usually small print runs and someone has to tell you of their existance, so if you do find out about a book it is near impossible to get it. Try buying Jack Maddock's book about road trains for instance. It would be great if they were even available in electronic form so you could read them on an E-reader or the computer.

A quick look on the forum shows how much interesting material there is out there, and some good yarn spinners as well, your stories Ron, Hi-Beam's story on Jack Ehret, the thread on Thomas Cabban just straight of the top of my head. They keep me entertained.

Thanks for that Ron, I was tempted to buy both those books, Stories From the Road 1 & 2, not now, so thanks again.

Ron you ever thought about getting your writing's done in one lot, so lot's more people can have a good read, instead of all the small snippets. Just my thoughts on the subject.

regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]


psst Cam - I got one that's been slightly read, sell it to you for half the price of this one.

You better think real hard about this offer, as they aint makin' no more :'(

www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?b...ry%26x%3D51%26y%3D10

Geenie, thank you for your kind offer. lol.
I've actually got a copy, and I didn't pay quite that much for it.
I've got a copy of that Stories from the Road here too mate if you want to borrow it. I'm pretty sure you won't be racing out to buy one once you've read it.

Yo greenie, thanks for your thought on putting it all together, didn't mean to put that page on but was the only one I could find with the old semi-coach. In the mid-nineties I had it printed, the editor of Truckin' Life liked it and put a 2 page spread in the magazine, also again in Classic truck, Overdrive, the leading trucking magazine in the U.S. put an article on it as did Wheels of Time, even truck and Bus, can't get more coverage than that! unfortunately there were no takers so they all went into the dumpster when I moved except for about 30 I sold at the Brisbane show for $5 each, cost me $4k so lesson learned there, concluded that the only people interested were on this forum!! My old mate Bob Foster wrote a couple which were popular. I first met Bob and his brother Doug when they came across from Qld and drove a Maple Leaf and an Inter KB7 for Kittle Bros to Alice and Larimah where they loaded heavy oil for the Tennant mines, I used to spend 4 days in Larimah waiting for the southbound mail and so got to be good friends, I would arrive in Tennant coming down and we would go out to eat and then consume large quantities of ale, they slept in a small tin shed next to the garage and we thought it should be in a more upscale location, so ran a rope around it and hooked it up to the old mail truck, laughing our heads off, Len Kittle burst on the scene shouting WTF do you think you are doing, I kept chanting "it's the cycle of erosion" why, I don't know, must have been something I learned at school, he just said keep the noise down and went, he was a very tolerent man. both brothers went to drive for Co-ord for many years, Doug ended up managing Noel Buntines outfit, Bob took charge of a big ABM plant building and repairing roads all over the top end. Doug passed away and Bob lives a quiet life near Surfers, he wrote a poem about Co-ord I have somewhere. if ever I get broke I know I can rely on Jack maddox's road train book to live off, that price is incredible, can hardly wait to see if someone actually buys it!!

Ron

I am always looking for books for Dad to read and if you have any copies or can make a copy i would be glad to purchase one as i love reading the inserts you put up on here.

Trevor

Be happy to do it Trevor but be a few months as my gear is all packed away, no charge as be a pleasure to do it for your dad.

Ron

Thanks for that sent you an email with details.

Trevor