Some EX Kwikasair / Comet 8 wheelers

.
Getting the truck onto a steep site is one thing,...……..
Getting the bricks off safely is another, ………..
Once you lift the pack and start to poke it out the side ( or where ever ), gravity can take
over on the slew and away she goes ,...….you then don't have much time to sort out the situation.
If you are in an open paddock no problem , if you are close to a building that can be a worry . ……...
………………….Billy...………………..

.
.Another pic of a Zacuba truck has appeared...................
My son was looking through his archives and spotted this.......................



1BX 842, that i was driving at the time (one of two UDs that never should have been bought )..............
This was an out of hours delivery to his new (at the time) house that was being built. ...............
What were the UDs like you might ask,???? Well, for some other job they may have been all right.....but for
delivering bricks they made a hard job nearly impossible at times...............
Only had the small donk , so were under powered to hell.......the ZF box gave a lot of auxillary problems.......
Reverse gear was that high that the clutch had to be slipped to get into most sites............
The over hang from the drive to the crane mounted on the rear was such that if you were on a bit
of a hump ,the crane legs could be a couple of feet off the ground and you had to get a step ladder to
operate the crane controlls. ..............
The overhang made the cab bounce a lot, on a bit of rough road you had to have one hand on the roof
to stop your head from being driven into your shoulders...............
The ZF box was replaced by a 9 speed Ranger ...that fixed the reversing problem but didnt help the
low power bit ............
They were a lot heavier than the KWs, so to be legal, they carried one thousand bricks less.............
Other than the box, they didnt give too much mechanical trouble, The brakes were excellent, could pull up
a hell of a lot better than the KWs.............
So.....The main problem was the specs that TNT provided ........A reasonably new TNT Equipment
boss, (a university stewd ant ) ..........,i suspect, was behind the ordering ....and his answer to the whole shomozzle
was .........get rid of the drivers and get someone that can do the job...... (that never happened of corse )............
Any way, after a year or so in it, i jumped at the chance to get into 1BX844, (one of the set back front axle
ex Comet 8 wheelers, where i stayed till i retired...........
As i said, they may have been ok for other work, but , for delivering bricks they were bloody terrible...............

.........................Billy...................

Billy P
That seems to be a hell of a gap between the two steer axles, must have had a long chassis/tray???
Dave_64

Dave_64 wrote:

Billy P
That seems to be a hell of a gap between the two steer axles, must have had a long chassis/tray???
Dave_64

Yeah Dave, the front springs were super long, while the overall wheel base wasnt all that long ,but with a
hell of an overhang behind the drive.......... In all, only a dimwit would have specked the final unit .......unless they
were some old stock that they got at a price and said this will be fine , the drivers can sort it out ............
...................Billy.....................

.
A couple of pics turned up a while back, but i have been too slack to do anything about them ..................

This is ex Comet PP841 ......Alltrans / Zacuba 1BX 845 .......S/N 406693..........

In a spot of bother on Bowen Mountain near Kurrajong ..........



.

This is the color scheme that was applied after Zacuba was sold to the PGH Group ........
Zacuba was financed by Sir Norman Nock who remained a partner with the three Italions who
built the brickworks untill his death , it was at this point that the sale to PGH occurred ..............

Back to the pics..........Bowen Mountain was a nasty place to do deliveries .....a lot of the roads were a
deep reduction job in the 8 wheelers .......then the entry to the building sites were worse........
Roads were narrow with sharp corners and there was only one way in and out of the area.......
In this case the low side of the road collapsed , and the only thing that stopped the truck from rolling
down the hill was , the crane got caught up in a tree ....................
It had to be unloaded by hand onto the road where another truck picked up the packs ............
Two tow trucks were needed , one to stabilize ,and the other to skull drag it back onto the road...........
A bit of a wash and old 845 went back to work...........Took a lot to stop these old KWs..............

The Zacuba stories are getting a bit short on supply these days................

..........................Billy...........................

Driver jacked up the outriggers to level the truck ,soon as the rubber was clear of the dirt,the truck skidded on the steel pads down the slope into a just finished house ............ driver couldnt understand why the truck would skid if it was level.