Here is a line up of my boys on the Kuwait-Iraq border. I had 200 trucks 90% Mercedes. They loaded wheat and flour plus water tankers in the afternoon and went off during the night to the border. I had to drive up 200km from Kuwait City each morning to get them to the front of the line of about 1,000 trucks milling to go through the single lane checkpoint when it opened at 0800.

My little Mitsubishi Lancer in the photo was a bit underpowered as it would only cruise at 180kmh on the desert freeway. After a month of this I could not see through the milky windscreen and the entire front of the car was shiny bare metal from the sand blowing across the road. Avis were not well pleased when I took it back. It was a wonder it was not bashed as well because almost every day I had to race across and park in front of one of the Brown and Roote US Army contractor trucks to make a path for my boys to the front of the queue.

My boys were Iraqi's, Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians and a bloody hard working bunch (no trucks had aircon in 50 degree heat). The Brown and Roote drivers were the scum of American truck driving society recruited off the streets to take jobs away from the thousands of highly qualified Iraqi drivers looking for work They lived in the Hilton Resort in Kuwait City while my mob slept permanently in or under their trucks.

I transferred to Basra in Iraq and then came down each morning in a UN Landcruiser which was such a slug it would top out at 140kmh.

Lang m80
Your line up of trucks
Reminds me of what Youtube shown me sum years ago
Dubia has no Sewage system

Clikity ................................. ClikClikClik

cya

Looking through the Iraq photos I found this. They were driven by little 5' 2" black girls accompanied by a "Loadmaster" 6" 4" bloke with muscles in his eyebrows who looked after tyre changing and loading. Those trailers had about a thousand go kart size wheels on them and the highways were covered in rubber - see a couple of trailer spares above my head. If they got a flat they would just pull up that bogey and proceed like a dog with a broken leg.

What were those tri drive jiggers, Lang?
Oshkosh??
Dave.

Dave

Pretty sure the front axle drove as well. 8V92 500hp with Allison box. Diff locks selectable for each axle The rear axle has co-ordinated steering with the front axle.

Built by Oshkosh rated at 108 tons. They just seemed to put more dolleys on as the load required.

Just after this time they re-engined them with 700hp C-18 Cats

Lang



The Poms had them as well. Note the mudguards on the British Oshkosh transporters (not needed in Iraq!) Both the American and British trailers could squat and raise each foot individually.

This is what a typical tank transporter driver looked like. Some of them seemed really undersize. Of course they had many male drivers as well.

I saw yards full of pranged US Army trucks but never saw a tank transporter that had been involved in an accident. If you have power steering, auto transmission and a gorilla for an offsider maybe a good idea to have the more careful girls driving. I think they did well.

Terrific photos Lang. I would have to agree with you about girls driving trucks- quite a few overland safari companies were happy to have girls as their primary driver- Dragoman, Exodus, Acacia to name a few as they were a lot more careful with the trucks. I met a lot of very attractive and equally capable young ladies in my time as a driver both on short safaris and on the longer London to Kenya run. . Even my boss had a girl driving for a good few years. Girls don't break too much shit, except blokes' hearts.

Mining companies have long espoused the benefits of female truck operators, this may be true but the introduction of females into a predominantly male dominated industry has caused many more problems that they never speak of and caused mining to become the clown show it is today.

600Dodge wrote:

Mining companies have long espoused the benefits of female truck operators, this may be true but the introduction of females into a predominantly male dominated industry has caused many more problems that they never speak of and caused mining to become the clown show it is today.

Or, is it the presence of the males that causes the problem? Just asking. (Applies to more than just mining, allegedly.)

They have caused tremendous problems in the military also. The real disaster is that every sensible person accepts men and women are equal while the morons believe men and women are the same.

Can you imagine that little girl in the photo achieving the aim of equality if they said "The transporter crews will be trained to multi task and the drivers and the loadmasters will share the work equally. They will alternate between driving and being responsible for changing tyres and dragging dogs and chains onto the trailer to secure an 80 ton tank"

There is plenty of work for women in the military but very few combat roles, which all require strength and endurance. Some imbeciles (mainly womens advocates) are pushing for female infantry soldiers - there are already some experimental ones. They think it is fair that women get lesser fitness tests and only carry 100 rounds of gun ammunition to the men's 200, that women can dig a shell scrape 6 inches deep in the time a man can go down 2 feet and none of them can carry a wounded comrade in a full body lift.

Relationships can not be controlled by a million regulations as demonstrated by the classic multi-sex experiment by the Navy who stagger from scandal and disaster at every turn.

As Swishy says "Nuf sed"