Truck & Driver UK – August 2019

Truck & Driver Summer 2019^107

tough transmission

that perfectly suits

the job in hand.

Unlike cabover

Kenworths of

that era, legroom

was very good

and the sleeper

was spacious

enough, which

was no bad thing

given that I lived in

that truck

continuously for about

five months. The twin

bunks came in handy when

my friend came out from Ireland

for a week’s holiday.

However, it took me quite a

while to grow accustomed to the

rudimentary cab design, the

noise from the stacks and the

general lack of comfort.

Kenworth drivers in Australia

often reminded me of Scania

drivers over in Europe; no other

brand will do, Kenworth is the

best, blah blah blah. But for

running up and down the Great

Northern Highway (which I would

do a lot of that season), I would

gladly have taken the refinement

and comfort of any European

truck back then.

Because cattle is seldom

heading north to Broome, our

cattle trailers are loaded with

pallets of bagged feed for

Broome’s export yards. The

metal mesh on the trailer floor is

folded against the sides, giving a

smooth surface, which facilitates

a pallet truck. Also, specifically-

designed back doors that can be

opened from the side allow

trailers to be reversed onto a

loading bay.

It’s a fair bit of work to load

about 62 pallets across three

double-deck cattle trailers, but

considering it’s a 2200km trip

Number 97, with a new set of bulk

tanks, just keeps going and going

Checking the cattle on a 400km local run from Fitzroy Crossing to Broome.

Below: Shorthorn bulls, unused to humans, demand respect when handling

each way it pays to be

productive. In addition to this

cargo, I also had my car, plus a

car belonging to a Kiwi driver,

driven into the bottom deck of

the lead and second trailer, over

the skid plate where pallets

could not be placed or accessed.

Having unloaded the feed

in Broome, my first job was to

load ‘boat cattle’ at one of the

export yards close to town and

deliver them onto a ship at the

wharf. Boat cattle are essentially

steers or heifers weighing

around 350kg, which are sent to

destinations such as Indonesia

and Vietnam by ship.

Ingenuity needed

Now, Broome is a small place

and the size of the wharf was an

eye-opener. Experiencing some

of the biggest tides – up to 10

metres – in Australia, a long jetty

is required. But the size of the

wharf itself is so small that a

triple roadtrain cannot turn

around. Always finding a new

way of doing things, RTA has a

CAT loader with an air fitting that

can drag around the back two

trailers once the truck is

unloaded. It takes a matter of

minutes and means that the

minimum number of trucks

possible is required to load a

ship. Although we loaded huge

ships that can accommodate up

to 20,000 head and take days to

load, most new vessels have a

3000-head capacity and are

loaded in about half a day before

they embark on the five-day

journey to Indonesia.

With an export market for the

above-mentioned type of animal,

that leaves the older bulls and

cows. For a number of factors,

there are no significant

meatworks in the north of

Australia, despite the number of

cattle there. For that reason, I

spent most of the 2012 season

hauling up and down the Great

Northern Highway; cattle down,

MORE THAN JUST A TRUCKSTOP