Truckin' OZ style

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Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:03 pm

My son has a new truck to drive,
If I'm counting correctly, its a 74 wheeler.
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby gudmund » Tue Jun 01, 2021 11:50 pm

your math seems good - that is what I counted also -I would hate to be the one having to buy all of them tires................. :?
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Wed Jun 02, 2021 1:14 am

You'd definitely need a quid to put new boots on there.
She'll be right though.
Kalari service Olympic Dam - the world's largest known uranium deposit and fourth largest copper deposit - so they should be able to afford the tyres.


Still shake my head though - that rig is probably around 3/4 million bucks and they put a 28 year old in it and say "off ya go son, try not to scratch it." :lol:
His granddad woulda had a tear in his eye if he'd lived to see it.
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby Bezoar » Wed Jun 02, 2021 5:46 am

That's not a truck, it's a train without a track! :)
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby Tom&Shelly » Wed Jun 02, 2021 7:04 am

I'd do okay until I had to back up. :lol:
Seriously cool job! Probably more like flying a large aircraft than driving a car. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Wed Jun 02, 2021 11:39 am

Bezoar wrote:That's not a truck, it's a train without a track! :)

We don't call them road trains for nothing! :lol:

Tom&Shelly wrote:I'd do okay until I had to back up. :lol:
Seriously cool job! Probably more like flying a large aircraft than driving a car. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Tom

I've seen guys who can reverse two trailers, heard of guys who can reverse three. But 4 trailers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbxNp2een0k
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:14 pm

Got some stats:
685 hp, 142t permit - not as much weight as I thought.

His uncle would be laughing at him, though.
My brother always said, "You drongos down south are all bitumen road cowboys. Ya use twice the horsepower to pull half the freight."
He was pulling double decker crates full of big black steers off the Northern Territory cattle stations. 600kg plus animals.

With regard to steering em', each trailer hooks up with a turntable.
If you look closely, it is actually two AB doubles joined together with a triaxle converter dolly in the middle.
So five pivot points in all.
It'll steer pretty good in general road running.
The trick is to run that prime mover straight - any little wobble there translates to a big swing down the other end.
Difficult with some trucks back in the day.
Some of them walked all over the flamin road.
Took mega concentration to stop the rear trailer from running off into the dirt or the on-coming traffic.

They've come a long way now.

Of course, a full lock turn will need to be done on dirt.
None of the axles steer except the very front one, so the tris need to be able to slide in a tight turn.
Otherwise you'll be treated to that lovely sound we call "tri-axle squeal".
Like finger nails down the blackboard.
I guess that might be a reason the marshalling yards are never paved.
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:51 pm

P.S. I wasn't so far off.
142 metric tonnes = 156.5 US tons
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Sat Jun 05, 2021 4:52 am

Funny truckin story from the 70s.
Just north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory is Three Ways Roadhouse.
So named because it is very close to a T junction that is the place where the two major highways (pretty much the only highways) meet and you choose between three destinations..
North takes you to Darwin in the NT, South takes you to Alice Springs and further on to South Australia.
East takes you across the Barkly Tablelands to Camooweal in Queensland.
So one night a bloke from the Southern Flinders here in South Australia, who shall remain nameless, possibly fortified with a few beers and perhaps a wakey wakey tablet, rolls out of the roadhouse, jumps in the triple road train, wakes the whole world with the air starter, that'd be the air starter with the missing silencer, and peels out, giving the 16 speed road ranger all he's got.
The Big Exit after a Big Session.

And turns the wrong way! :rofl2:

By the time he woke up to his error, he had to drive a couple hundred miles before he found somewhere to turn the rig around.

News of such hilarious moments always travels fast. We found out when Andy, the local DJ down here south of the border, opened the Country Hour with the song Give Me Forty Acres (and I'll turn this rig around) dedicated to our wayward southern son. :laughing1:
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby Tom&Shelly » Sat Jun 05, 2021 6:50 am

:lol:

For those interested, here's the song (Boxcar Willie's version):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctZ7hJBSrpM

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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby Philip » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:11 am

MickinOz wrote:News of such hilarious moments always travels fast. We found out when Andy, the local DJ down here south of the border, opened the Country Hour with the song Give Me Forty Acres (and I'll turn this rig around) dedicated to our wayward southern son. :laughing1:


A very fitting song for that ooopppsss.

I also bet his new handle on the radio was" wrong way".

:lol:
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby tony.latham » Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:39 am

My son has a new truck to drive,


Amazing.

Are those multi-trailer rigs common there? Are the containers built for a specific cargo?

:thinking:

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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby MickinOz » Sat Jun 05, 2021 2:41 pm

tony.latham wrote:
My son has a new truck to drive,


Amazing.

Are those multi-trailer rigs common there? Are the containers built for a specific cargo?

:thinking:

Tony

Multi trailer rigs are the norm here - can't make a living one trailer at a time..

The most uncommon semi-truck here is a single trailer rig.
The old "18 wheeler" - bogie drive prime mover, pulling a bogie axle trailer - is pretty rare.
Usually that'll just be a local short haul delivery truck for a grain farmer or a quarry. Someone who needs to get trailers out of town to where he can put a train together will pull singles, but they'll have three axles, not two.

There are specific road train routes that go all the way into the Port Adelaide, the main shipping terminal in the capital.
The rules are pretty complex, but I believe they can drag A-Doubles and B triples and B-Doubles in and out of there. Once out of the city, there are marshalling yards, where they can put some of these rigs together and pull triples out.
Then north of Port Augusta, they can now pull full "super quads".
https://www.truckandbus.net.au/quad-roa ... et-for-sa/

My son's truck hauls some sort of sand, I forget what.
Once upon a time they used ordinary tippers for such work, that hoist the tray with a big hydraulic ram and tipped over the back axles.
These are a common thing, but have a couple of problems - they fall over easy if some of the dirt hangs up around the hoist well, and you either have to break up the train or jackknife it to tip the front trailer. I've had 4 of these fall over, and countless jackknifed rigs get bogged in their own cargo. :x

So some mobs use side tippers. These tip the whole tray to one side.
Big improvement on a standard tipper in my opinion, but I've had one of these fall over too.

The son's rig looks to have side opening gates. So you pull up on a grid, open the gates, the cargo falls out either side of the trailer and then you drive out. Quick, efficient, safe, barely get your wheels dirty.
If you look closely you'll se that as well as the bulk cargo boxes there are smaller boxes, I believe these are for back loading bundles of cathode copper out of Olympic Dam.

Speed limit is 100km/hr about 62 mph, but Kalari have stuck with the old 89 km/hr limit. It's all remotely monitored for speed and driver drowsiness, There's a camera in the cab, if it detects rapid blinking of the eyes or no blinking, they call you up to see if you are having troubles staying awake.
You actually have to do a mandated fatigue management course before you are allowed to drive the big gear.
My son called 'em up one night - can't stay awake stopping the rig right here for a sleep.
Mentioned at the next safety meeting as a positive example.
Of course, if you were doing it every night...........not so tolerant I'd expect they'd be asking whether you slept through the fatigue management course. :lol:
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby tony.latham » Sat Jun 05, 2021 3:06 pm

The son's rig looks to have...


How far does he haul?

Tony

p.s. it's as if you live on the other side of this planet? ;)
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Re: Truckin' OZ style

Postby TimC » Sat Jun 05, 2021 3:09 pm

MickinOz wrote: ...Of course, if you were doing it every night...........not so tolerant I'd expect they'd be asking whether you slept through the fatigue management course. :lol:


Mick, are the Aussie "hours behind the wheel" rules similar to the states? I'm not sure what our current rules are (been away from driver log summaries for three decades now) but I think they are somewhere around eight or ten hours with mandated breaks and rig inspections.

Also not up to date on safety rates for truck drivers here but I think that the overall safety of truck drivers is pretty good these days.
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