Aussie Peterbilts and owners

...thanks for the additional info Grumpy .. Jim Elsons conventional has remained a very dark horse in the time it was operated by him, and i suspect the cream colour you mentioned would be the original Mainline Ivory with the Maroon belt and mudguards possibly having been painted out ??... also the Ansett blue and yellow is still there to see, never having had any serious paintwork stripdown in all its life...

...Elson Bros (W J Elson) changed the business name on the shift to Sydney to "Redwood Traders"... corner of George and Allen St Waterloo...apparently sharing the yard with Blair and Reiber who had two Peterbilts of their own at the time...

...Werk .. i'll get back to that second half of Swishys pics soon ....cheers fellas

...continued from Swishy's pictures.....

...The next conventional belongs to the Ridolfo family (ch/no 16473) who managed to track her down, bring it back to the West and restore her from a very sorry mess to her former glory after living almost its entire life up around Innisfail QLD mainly on logs and sawn timber with only a couple of owners in between...

...the following conventional is a Yankee blow-in...

... the front on blue and white cabover is the one purchased by m'self in 1992 after a succession of proud owners and a lot of mods and alterations along the way until then...

...first operated by Harry Daniels of Kulnura NSW (ch/no 20680), it was the first Peterbilt in Australia to pull doubles (from Cloncurry QLD into the Northern Territory from 1966) for the Burns Philp-Adelaide Steamship Company carting all manner of supplies and timber for their trading posts and outlets...

...He was doing this for a while before Doug McIntyre bought two second hand units for similar work, and some pretty good colour photos exist of her painted in a similar scheme to Mainlines'... on the highway...doubles hooked up...

...it came down into Victoria in the early 1970's and has been here ever since with a variety of owners on all kinds of work, and even before her major cab rebuild in 1979 (after a prang), the owner Pete Johannsen stated "she was well worn and worn well"...now running a 335 and 15 O/D...

...The next one, the pale green cabover (ch/no 15977), is a favourite of mine being an original Mainline survivor and having a long and varied career on the highways...never having been off semi trailer work its whole life...

...Mainline, Alltrans, Max Hickey, Copper City Transport, Terry Jones of Blacktown, Gerry Vlanderen then to his son Doug in recent years...still with its aluminium rails and still a very proud truck now in need of restoration...

...next cabover is a later import...

... and the following photo shows the Highway Haulage cabover ch/no 19162 which unfortunately was written off in the early 1970's when one of the hendrickson walking beams parted company with the axle bracket, dug in and caused a major accident to occur...and was interesting for the fact it was the only RoadRanger factory fitted into a standard sleeper cab version...

...next is an American period file photo...

...,then the two Cannington day cab fuel tankers ch/nos 16109 and 16110...

...16109 had a 220 Cummins and went through to PCT till about 1968 after which the whole unit was sold to Scotts of Mt Gambier SA, carting fuel from Port Largs to servos in and around Adelaide, then purchased by Laurie O'Neil/Jock Campbell (Deacon Avenue Tpt), maybe another owner or two before ending up in CMV's wrecking yard in Adelaide only to be rescued by trailer engineer Barry Stoodley...now a bare bones project here in Tullamarine.

...16110 had a 1673B Cat engine and soldiered on after PCT with numerous owners around Sydney before being fitted with a 380 Cummins! and also ending her days in Adelaide, and was comprehensively cut up quite a few years ago. Whatever remains of these two old Canninton bangers now reside together out the back in Tullamarine

...last but not least are ch/nos 17791 and 17792 amazing together in 2015 after travelling down the line in Newark California in 1964, one after the other!...

17791 was owned by a firm with the name "C&H Transport" with no knowledge whatsoever about who they were or what they did. It did a stint at Seatons before going in to the Pacific Coast fleet in 1967 and then on to a succession of owners,and once again always having been a semi trailer...sometimes pulling two... earlier in the 1970's with Graham Otto of Lowood QLD, then later in the 1980's in an Aussie film called "Slate,Wynn, and Me", filmed up around Swan Hill, and owned (and driven in the film) at the time by truck dealer Frank Saul...

...a few more owners, a stint in the Western Australian wheatbelt, back to Victoria and couple more owners, and now in Tullamarine with an 8V71 and 15 OD RR

...CH/NO 17792 was first operated by Williams Tpt of Carey St Euston NSW, traded at Thiess White in Footscray, to Walter Wright Contractors for a short period, then off to Sydney for a long stretch with Harry Prouse doing interstate general and local . A couple more owners beyond the 1980's before finding its way down into Victoria in the early 2000's, and now parked beside its brother...this one still has a 250 and fitted with a 15 OD RoadRanger

G,day Detective,very interesting reading...thank you.Just an observation, I have 'detected' a theme/trend developing amongst all this 'PETERBILT' history....Not only were the 'O'NEIL' family good at selling 'FODEN's',they were good at selling 'PETERBILT's' to many of their 'FODEN' customers.....Arthur Gillot, John L Pierce, Ron Thompson,Harold Daniels (not Harry). To name a few....Look forward to the next instalment.
PS. BillyP, Looks like that 'M.L' Peterbilt had Shell south bound Pennant Hills all 'baled up'....

...that's exactly what it was Giddy .. Laurie O'Neil went back and saw all his old Foden customers and very successfully swung most of them over to the Peterbilt product...

...admittedly i was told from various people about "Harry" Daniel, and his son Barry carried on the family business for quite a long time after Harold's death...

... years ago when i spoke with his lovely wife Marcia, i must admit she never referred to him as Harry, and the firm was correctly titled H.K.& M.E. Daniel ....thanks for the correction

Tec,
I dont know if you can make anythin out of this story, its straight out of the faded memory banks........

At Lansvale in the 70s a bloke used to bring a Pete in for the occasional service & repairs.

His name was Chapman, (as i recall)..........the Pete was a long nose, Cummins power,( a 250 i think)

with a 2 stick spicer box..........bogie drive.......Green & white in colour..........

Im pretty sure he subbied for AFL........How or where he got the truck i dont know.but.......it wouldnt

surprise me if he had bought it from them..........thats about all that i recall of it...but ..............one

thing that stuck in my mind was the way he handled the 2 stick box.

I used to take most of the gear for a before & after run........this day he sez.. come with me....i want you

to listen to somethin .. so away we go for a burst aruond the block.

Admittedly we didnt go too far, but ......he changed both sticks with the one hand...........the gear knobs

were super close to one another & with the one hand he would screw them around , gettin it outa gear.

press in the clutch, screw his hand around & with a barely audible rattle, pop both into gear at the same time

out with the clutch, ( eng revs had been brought up to what ever) & away we go.

he was the only bloke that i had seen do it that way.( maybe others do i dont know)

(maybe he had super big hands)...............

Talkin about big hands.............the biggest hands i ever seen were attached to a bloke that used to

drive the float for The Baker Shovel Co......Camelia............Mate .......one of his hands was bigger

than both of mine put together...............bloody huge.......

Well thats about it......................Billy.....................

....Hi BillyP .. could it have been Bill Chappell...he had an ex Alltrans conventional later in the 1970's.. 250 and 4x4 (ch/no 22058)...

...or there was Steve Campbell with one of the ex AFL conventionals also later in the 1970's..250, 4x4 (ch/no 16437)

...or if it had flutes in the bonnet sides it'll be the long missing ex Freezer Van Tpt conventional that ended up looking a lot like an AFL banger in dark green...but very little else known of its subsequent history after George Krievens finished with it in the mid/late 1970's

Tec,
Thinkin.....thinkin......thinkin........

Unfortually the memory bank is blank...............

What is a trifle annoyin...is .....about 5 years back we had a big clean out..............With the rubbish

went a customer contact list ( names ...contact nos.... truck info etc) ...of every one who came through

the Lansvale work shop while i was there. ( throw some thing out & sure as eggs down the track youl want it )
..............Billy.............

...bugger!

GREETINGS
NOW, I COULD BE WRONG HERE AND I'M SURE DETECTIVE WILL KNOW FROM WHAT I'VE READ SO FAR BUT WHEN MOST ADELAIDE- SYDNEY TRUCKS HAD TO PASS THROUGH NURIOOTPA [SA] SEEING A PETERBILT WAS SOMETHING NOTABLE AND I'M SURE A WHITE-ISH CAB OVER HAD AN ALLISON AUTOMATIC- THIS IS EARLY '70's AS I WAS STILL PUSHING THE MALVERN STAR AROUND HANGING OUT AT THE POST OFFICE CORNER WHERE ALL TRUCKS HEADING EAST HAD TO STOP. I RECKON THE CAB HAD A 4 OR 5 INCH RED/MAROON STRIPE RUNNING JUST BELOW THE DRIVER'S DOOR WINDOW AND HAD A PIPE BULL BAR SIMILAR TO THE KW DESIGN. I'VE GOT A B&W KODAK INSTAMATIC PHOTO OF IT TAKEN ON THE MOVE THROUGH THE WINDSCREEN OF M.A.N 9215 ON ONE OF MY SCHOOL HOLIDAY TRAINEE TRUCK DRIVER RUNS TO SYDNEY. BOGIE SPREAD TRAILER, KYSOR ROOF MOUNT AIR-CON. THE WHEELCHOCK WILL NOT HELP WITH PHOTOBUCKET.
AM I ON THE MONEY WITH THE ALLISON????

....Hi overlander .. that Allison auto cabover was a Kenworth 335 and bought new by Jim Johnson after he had a nasty prang and buggered his left arm... apparently the colour scheme was a carbon copy of the cabover Peterbilt he had previously operated.

...I'm pretty sure he was tied up at this stage with Edmund T Lennon and carted batteries or something similar to Adelaide from Sydney...???

...there may be a few old timers here that could chime in on that one mate.....cheers