Funny Mack Story

As some of you know during harvest It is practice to get all your trucks loaded and in the que sunday night in town at the bin to get a jump on the weeks delivery. We had a single drive Flintstone Mack with a coolpower in it which I used to drive and my old man hated it. He would never drive it. One Sunday he did drive it into town and line it up in the que which wasnt a problem but Monday morning unbknown to him was going to be one he wouldnt forget. The pub was across the road from the bin and after a few coldies on the sunday night we decided to play a little trick on him and disconnected the stop cable from the pump and wired it in the off position. As discrete as we could so he wouldnt notice. Monday he got in their bright an early, opened the air tank, turned the key on and pushed the start valve and she no go. After many attempts..no air. After a call on the two way with many expleteives about Mack air starts we instructed him on how to get air out of the tyres with the hose...with four flat drives and a can of aerostart later we suggested he look at the stop on the pump. A very embarrassed man took him awhile to pump all the tyres back up to....geez did we get a mouthfull !
Barry

Classic.

I liked your "shuddering to a screeching stop in the Mack with a fuel 'problem'" story as well...

You mean the dopey operater running out of fuel in the middle of busiest intersection in Perth during peak hour...that'd be me.
Next day I got nicked by the heavy's...big week that one. Last load from the fertilizer works for the season so I snuck the last bit on for our order. Certainly wasnt going to drive 500 k's to come back for 3.5 ton...mistake that was. Turned the two way off when I was having lunch and missed the message noddy and his mates had moved in a k down the the road from the works.
Barry

Heres a story of running out of petrol .
Now most of you blokes who know me i dont mind a good chin wag anthow i was i'm way home from aclub trip and stop to talk a mate all the time my 1950 Landrover is ticking over.
All of a sudden she stop runing didn't think much of it at the time until isaid i will seea she wont start look in the tank no petrol my mate had to tow me couple K's to a servo. :-[
I think thats where it all started i have run out of petrol about 10 times now in some funny places. Dave

no one runs out of petrol/diesel or lpg more than me !..i just have a habit of seeing how far i can get out a tank..everytime i come up with the same answer..never far enough

G'day fellas,

I has a cracker of a story for yas! One day, the old man gets this brilliant brainwave to buy a Chamberlain rolling chassis (refer to an earlier post re. this!) and about a million bits and pieces except the engine and main transmission.... anyways, towie mate of ours brings the chassis out for us on one of his long-sold tilt-tray Hinos and dumps it half way up the driveway! Cut a long story short, he proceeded to use the Champion MkII Industrial tractor (the engine and main tranny donor machine - with no brakes) to pull the blasted chassis up the driveway - guess what happened? About 20 feet from the back gate, said Champion MkII Industrial ran out of diesel - someone forgot to check the fuel tank (which, by the way, is under the seat on the bloody things!). Went to the shed, got the jerry can with 20 litres of diesel in it, decanted it into the fuel tank - no start... took an hour, some really choice words (which I won't repeat here!) and about half a can of Aerostart to bleed the air from the fuel system to enable it to start. Moral of the story: if you need to use a tractor for something, always check the fuel level before starting the engine! If you don't, you will end up running out of fuel at the most inappropriate time and in the most inappropriate place!

Hi all l worked at K&S Freighter at Footscray and we had a 1418 yard truck that stopped every 2nd day with fuel problems. The old girl would stop in the yard, half in the workshop, on the road {No Rego} until l cut the tank open and took all the dirt, migwire, cans, coffee cup etc out of the tank. l fitted a new spin on filter and filled the tank and away it went for about 2 months until one day some came around to say the Benz has stopped. Went and towed it back to the workshop to find the tank was dry. 2 months was the longest it had run in years with out needing bleeding, with Diesel in away it went again. ;)Podge

To date, the old trucks I've bought as a hobby have never had a working fuel guage between them...except for the TK we've just acquired...all the mod cons these 60s Bedfords. However, I have yet to run out of fuel in one (and have probably jinxed myself now) - tend to get bogged instead.

When I was driving for a living, one of the girls on my crew ran out of fuel about 3 kms short of the crusher, just after "lunch" on night shift when the middle of WA gets rather cold. One of the things we would do during pre-start was check to make sure the external guage read between 2/3 and 3/4 (1800 litre tank on CAT 785s from memory). The trucks were refueled every 12 hours at lunch time as we'd park up at the fuel farm before heading in. You can imagine the profit margins of mines has been severely affected by the high fuel prices nowadays! Despite the fitters had neglected to refuel her truck the crew did well at the wet mess because of her stuff up!

A funny Mack story for me was the time I spent the morning washing the B61 and then decided to do some high speed runs down a mate's airstrip. Managed to do a number of laps but left one run a bit long so had to turn around in wet grass which turned out to be a mud hole and, being bobtail, I suddenly wasn't going very far. Had to suffer the indignity of being pulled out by a tractor...backwards.

Ooh, then when I was living in Manjmup, I drove to a club event on a permit to get some advice from a fellow member. On the way home, barrelling along (with no plates of course), we pass a police car. Now, I'd never had any problem before but as I looked in the mirror, the car's lights came on, he did a u-turn and I was already pulling into a roadside parking area already occupied by two Matthews Transport Atkinsons with stock crates. The car pulled up behind me, I jumped down to start talking to the cops and Jess, the Mack, took offence to being pulled over so decided to slowly roll back towards the car. I had forgotten to put the park brake on. Needless to say, the maxis had never gone on so quickly and at the same time I remembered where I'd put the permit - not in the glove box but folded in a little clip between the two seats. They were local cops anyway so we knew each other but the first thing they said was, "You've got no plates, mate". I came very close to saying "What?! They were there when I left!".