Classic Road Trains

dated July 30th, 2009

A series of great videos have been posted on You Tube recently depicting life 25 years ago for road train drivers. They follow the lives of several truckies hauling cattle and goods around the outback. The stories wouldn’t be much different today but the trucks would be much better, more powerful and with much improved comfort levels.

Diesel at 52 cents a litre takes you back to the good old days but looking at the size of the non-integrated sleepers does not induce the same kind of nostalgia. Doing 14 tyres on one trip sounds like hard work when you’re hauling 6 decks of cattle.

The essential value of theis great video is as a record of the way things were back in 1985 for a trucking industry growing fast and trying to cope with that growth. There are so many things which have changed in the intervening 20 or so years but, at the same time, there are also parts of the job which will never change.

Click on the links below to watch the story unfold, as it did in 1985