Truck Features

Road trains in various forms have been with us since the mid-1800s and development of Australia’s sparsely populated, but asset-rich, northern regions would not have been possible without the post Word War II derivatives.

John Fowler 7hp steam road locomotive – NSW Environment Energy and Science

Early road trains in the post-1850 era consisted of steam ‘road locomotives’, puling multiple wagons, predominantly loaded with ore or wool. These were larger developments of self-propelled traction engines that were used in road making and agriculture.

They were heavy, powerful machines, capable of pulling loads up to 120 tons. They were virtual ‘trains’ that ran on roads, without the need for costly railway-track infrastructure.

In Europe, French and British engineers developed road trains for military purposes and during the Crimean War (1853-56), a traction engine was used to pull multiple open trucks. By 1898 steam traction engine trains with up to four wagons were trialled in military manoeuvres in England.

In 1900, John Fowler & Co provided armoured road trains for use by the British Armed Forces in the Second Boer War. Lord Kitchener stated that he had some 45 steam road trains at his disposal.

The first documented road trains operated in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, hauling ore to Port Augusta area in the mid-19th century. They displaced bullock teams and were, in turn, superseded by railways.

However, like bullock teams, the early steam road trains needed firm, fairly flat terrain on which to operate. Neither mode could handle soft, sandy or muddy surfaces; let alone sand ridges up to 20 metres high. That’s where camel ‘trains’, operated by ‘Afghan’ cameleers, came into their own.

1911 camel train – State Library of South Australia

Initially introduced to haul supplies for the ill-fated Burke and Wills Expedition to cross the continent from south to north, in 1860, camel trains soon proved their worth in servicing remote communities and properties all across the Australian ‘Outback’.

Thousands of camels and their Muslim cameleers arrived in Australia in the second half of the 19th century and were labelled almost universally as ‘Afghans’, although many of them came from the other ‘-stan’ countries in South Asia.

Mosque in Marree, SA

Camel trains were also vital in opening up inland Australia from the late-1800s, being the backbone of the 1873 Warburton Expedition and the subsequent 1891-92 Elder; 1894 Horn; 1896-97 Calvert and Carnegie; 1916 Strzelecki and 1939 Madigan Expeditions.

The history of Australia’s camel trains and their cameleers is covered well in in Philip Jones’ and Anna Kenny’s Australia’s Muslim Cameleers, published by Wakefield Press and updated in 2010. (Incidentally, HV accompanied Philip Jones on an archaeological excursion to SA’s Lake Callabonna in 2008.)

Internal combustion road trains

Steam, electric and internal combustion engines (ICEs) were fighting for supremacy at the turn of the century and the ICE won out. Steam road locomotives had great pulling power, but were heavy and slow, and demanded boiler fuel and water top up at regular intervals. Wood and water were scarce in arid Australia. 

The first ICE-powered successor to the steam road locomotive was the Renard Roadtrain system that was invented and patented in 1903 by Colonel Charles Renard, an inventive French military engineer. 

With input from Darracq and, later, Surcouf the Reynard road-train was unveiled at the Paris Salon. It consisted of a Darracq-powered four-wheeled tractor unit, coupled to as many as four six-wheeled trailers, whose centre axles were driven by a series of shafts from a power take off behind the tractor’s rear axle. Linked steering axles on the trailers meant that the entire unit tracked in the same wheel ruts.

Charles Renard

Charles Renard was mortified by the French Government’s disinterest in his innovations, its refusal to help fund their development and rejection of his candidacy for membership to the Academie des Sciences. Tragically, Charles Renard committed suicide in April 1905: one month before his first commercial passenger unit was ready for sale.

That first Roadtrain was sold to Breteil Freres, a large dairy firm in Manche, France, in July 1905. It hauled 45 tons of butter daily, into various markets.

By 1906 a successor Renard Syndicate Ltd had been formed. A prototype was sent to London in pursuit of a higher-powered engine and by 1908 the Daimler Motor Company was supplying engines and secured exclusive rights  to manufacture Daimler-Renard Roadtrains.

1910 Daimler-Renard at Farina – State Library of South Australia

The vehicles enjoyed some success in England, Germany, Hungary, America and Australia. Between four and six Daimler-Renards arrived in Australia and a derelict example was discovered in the South Australian town of Farina, in 1972. It was subsequently restored and now has pride of place at the Stories from the Road Museum in Port Pirie.

This South Australian Daimler-Renard is the only one known to have been powered by a four-cylinder engine, when the standard engine was the Daimler Silent Knight sleeve-valve six, with a bore of 185mm and a stroke of 150mm, delivering maximum power of 113bhp at 1000rpm.

Daimler’s plan was to export Roadtrains to Commonwealth countries, but increasing production costs saw pricing soar to around Stg£5000. In addition, there were in-service problems, including very high noise levels from the cardan shaft joints and loss of traction on uneven ground.

Nonetheless, the arrival of the Daimler-Renard caused a sensation in Adelaide, in 1909. The 23rd April newspaper editions noted that the Roadtrain had been imported by the Union Consolidated Copper Mines and passed through the streets of Adelaide on its way to work between Farina and Yudnamutana, a distance of 80 miles.

Despite its then-incredible hauling capacity and agility, the Daimler-Renard Roadtrain was never a commercial success and production ceased before the beginning of World War I.

The Mueller Petrol-Electric Road Train 

Albury’s main thoroughfare saw an even more extraordinary display of mechanical might in May 1914, according to historian, Percy King. No less than 100 tons of fully loaded Mueller Petrol-Electric Road Train ground its way up Dean Street to the rail yards.

This 10-trailer monster was headed by a motor van that housed an electric dynamo, driven by two 125bhp, six-cylinder Daimler engines. Propulsion came from no fewer than 22 direct-current 25hp electric motors – one on each axle. 

The wheels were four feet (1.2 metres) in diameter, wooden spoked and banded with 10-inch (250mm), flat-iron tyres. The combination measured 216 feet (66 metres) long and weighed 43.5 tons (39.5 tonnes). Top speed loaded was 6-8mph (10-13km/h) and petrol consumption up to two gallons per mile 470L/100km).

Imported from Germany by sheep breeder, R S Falkiner, of Hay in late 1913, the Road Train’s inventor, Major W A Mueller and two assistants came to Melbourne to assemble and commission it. 

The venture didn’t start well, because the then-astronomical cost of the train was £13,000 (around A$1 million in today’s money), plus import duty of around a third of that amount. There was a court battle over the amount of duty that saw it reduced substantially, but legal costs went against Falkiner.

The ‘shake down’ journey was hauling 50 tons (45.4 tonnes) of cargo to Edmondson & Co at Wagga Wagga – some 277 miles (446km) away.

The journey north in January was beset with problems that included a broken crankshaft,  failed clutches and broken valve rollers and stems that damaged pistons and cylinders. Also, overheating was a constant issue in summer heat that the designers did not envisage.

It was three months after the Melbourne departure when some cargo was off-loaded at Albury. The depleted road train finally reached Wagga in May, but ongoing unreliability remained an issue.

As war clouds gathered, Mueller and the German crew departed, rather than risk being detained in Australia, as hostile aliens, during the imminent hostilities.

It was February 1915 before the road train was seen in Hay and began its intended task of hauling wool to the railway, for despatch to Sydney.

Inevitably, the engines gave out after the road train became bogged in the sticky goo of the ‘black soil plains’ around Hay, stranding 250 bales of wool that had to be offloaded. 

The road train was eventually railed back to Melbourne and stored temporarily. However, it was totally destroyed when the warehouse burnt down. (It’s tempting to think the Mueller Petrol-Electric Road Train might have been sacrificed for its insurance value…) 

Big Lizzie

Red Cliffs and District Historical Society

It’s not known how this massive tractor unit was named, but In early 1915 Frank Bottrill commenced construction of this monster, in Melbourne. He designed it as a replacement for the camel trains that carried wool and other heavy loads in sandy terrain. 

Fabrication and assembly of the huge prime mover and two trailers was carried out by Bottrill over a period of 12 months, with casting and machining done by A H McDonald Co of Richmond, Victoria.  Financing was provided by Ralph Falkiner, who had already spent a great deal of money on the failed Mueller project.

Big Lizzie was massive, measuring 10.36 metres long, 3.35m wide and 5.49m high, while weighing a hefty 45 tonnes. The tractor’s payload was 10 tonnes and its two road-train trailers – 9 metres long, 3m wide and 2.13m high – could carry 35 tonnes each. It had a vast running circle of 61 metres.

Power came from a 60 hp (44.7kW) Blackstone, water-cooled, single-cylinder crude oil engine that had a bore of 228 mm and stroke of 450 mm, giving a displacement of 18.4 litres. It drove through a four-speed forward and two-speed reverse transmission to 2.13-metre-diameter drive wheels. Peak power was produced at a very low 215rpm and road speed was 1-3mph.

More information can be found in Ron Maslin’s book: Big Lizzie – The Story of a Man and a Machine, but here are a couple of interesting quotes:

“It was started by compressed air stored in a cylinder adjacent to the engine and ignition was by a hot bulb heated initially by a large blowlamp. Fuel was injected simultaneously into the hot bulb and the combustion chamber by compressed air and a compressor pump was built into the engine and driven from the crankshaft. 

“The steering gear, which was rather advanced for the period in which the machine was made, is unlike the turntable type steering of traction engines and wagons, more of the automotive type. It uses king-pins, knuckles and tie rods of massive size.”

Frank Bottrill 1912 ped-rail patent

Frank Bottrill realised that Big Lizzie’s massive drive and steer-axle wheels would sink into soft ground, so he fitted redesigned dreadnought wheels to his tractor. His patented design, with sequentially-ovelapping road plates was lodged in 1912 and had already proved its worth on prior McDonald tractors.

In 1916, Big Lizzie left Richmond, with a plan to be in Broken Hill by early 1917. The route chosen through Victoria was via Kilmore, Heathcote, Elmore and Echuca, where it was proposed to cross the Murray River into NSW. 

Big Lizzie’s right of passage was granted on the condition that Bottrill paid for road damage en route and he was also up for repairing a bridge near Kilmore.

When Big Lizzie reached the flooded Campaspe River, a delay of three weeks was necessary, while de-snagging and earthworks below the weir near Elmore were done, to provide a crossing.

Frank Bottrill was unable to cross the Murray at Echuca because of floods and he could not get permission to cross the approach bridge to the town, so he headed for Swan Hill, on the south side of the Murray. 

He arrived at Kerang in January 1917 and spent five months carrying out modifications and repairs. In October 1917 Big Lizzie arrived in Mildura to find the Murray River in flood, so completing his journey was out of the question for several months at least.

Bottrill sought scrub-clearing work for Big Lizzie in the area, while he waited for conditions to improve. 

By August 1920, Big Lizzie had commenced clearing scrub for a proposed 6000-hectare irrigation area of Red Cliffs that was to provide 700 Soldier Settlement blocks for veterans of World War I. 

A gang of up to 16 men was employed to handle four heavy cables that were attached to large numbers of trees and stumps. Repairs to damaged cables were carried out on the front platform of Big Lizzie, which was equipped with blacksmith’s forge, anvil and toolbox.

Clearing work at Red Cliffs was completed in 1924 and Big Lizzie was driven to Western Victoria to find more work clearing land. (By this stage the Broken Hill dream was over.) 

However, the relocated scrub-clearing venture was not a success and Frank Bottrill and his wife later abandoned Big Lizzie on Glendenning Station. 

In 1938 the Blackstone engine was sold and moved to Pyramid Hill, where it was used to drive stone-crushing equipment until 1942, after which it was broken up for scrap in 1945.

In 1971- the year of Red Cliffs Golden Jubilee –  a committee was formed, to negotiate the purchase and return of Big Lizzie to Red Cliffs. Big Lizzie and one trailer now hold pride of place in Barclay Square, Red Cliffs.

The AEC Roadtrain

Government Roadtrain with four trailers – the last two locally made

If there’s one thing we learnt from Sir Humphrey Applebee (Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister TV series) it’s that bureaucrats are always on the lookout for cheap ways of doing things.

At the 1927 British Colonial Office conference it was determined it would be more cost effective to develop a land tractor or road train than to invest the money required to build railways in remote areas of the British Commonwealth. It’s important to note that these conclusions were drawn by people who’d never seen a monsoon or a sand dune!

The design specifications for the land tractor were created by the British Overseas Mechanical Transport Committee and funded by the British and South African governments. However, when it became obvious that even this shortcut to a ‘railway’ was going to be quite expensive, another 25 Commonwealth counties, including Australia, contributed finances.

The precise design brief has been lost over the intervening 90+ years, but it seems that the Brits had woken up to the fact that the 100+tons train weighs hauled by trains could not be replicated off rail tracks – particularly as the requirement was for rough-road or off-road capabilities. As a result, the design called for a real-world payload of around 30 tons.

The first prototype was constructed by Leyland Motors and subsequent units were built by AEC’s wholly owned subsidiary company, Hardy Motors. The specialist trailers were produced by RA Dyson & Co of Liverpool.

The first AEC Roadtrain was completed in December 1930 at a cost of Stg£12,000 and was powered by a six-cylinder petrol engine. Production units had a 130bhp (97kW) six-cylinder AEC diesel engine of 8.8-litre displacement, driving through a four-speed manual transmission and three-speed transfer case.

The AEC Roadtrain consisted of an eight-wheeled prime mover and two eight-wheeled trailers, making the entire train 21.84 metres long. All wheels had single tyres and traction was applied to all eight wheels through four differentials.

The steering axles on the prime mover were the first and fourth axles, so it pivoted around the centre two axles when turning.

The eight-wheeled trailers were self-tracking, being fitted with bogies at each end that turned in opposite directions, allowing the trailers to run in the tracks of the prime mover. Each bogie was fitted with a turntable connected to the other by a spring loaded linkage.

This prototype completed 5500 miles (8900km) of laden and unladen tests at the War Department’s grounds at Farnborough, UK. On completion of the trials the unit was shipped to the British colony of Gold Coast (now Ghana) for further trials before it was put to work.

It was used to carry agricultural produce, bags of salt, cement, pipes, timber, livestock and…people. The Roadtrain completed more than 80,000 miles (130,000km) before it was sold to the Gold Coast Government for Stg£2000 in 1934. It is believed the petrol engine was later replaced by a diesel engine.

The second Roadtrain was built by AEC at a reduced cost of Stg£7000 and was scheduled to go to South Africa, which country had been involved in funding the program from the beginning, but the Government of Australia committed to pay Stg£2000 over the next two years to the British Overseas Mechanical Transport Committee, so it was re-routed to Australia. 

Following some local testing in early 1934, the Roadtrain set out in April from Adelaide to Alice Springs via Oodnadatta, under the command of Captain (later Brigadier) E M Dollery, Chief Inspector of Mechanical Transport for the Australian Defence Department, with a British crew comprising Captain E C Roscoe, two driver/mechanics and a local cook. 

The Roadtrain covered 1100 miles (1800km) of unmade roads in three weeks, carrying fuel and supplies for the trip. Captain Dollery reported:

We tracked over trackless wastes of sandhills. Some days we only progressed two or three miles. We drove a car ahead to reconnoiter the most practicable routes and we usually had to make our own tracks to consolidate the sand, then we winched the trailers over one by one. 

When we reached the Hugh River we had to cross it 11 times in 22 miles, each crossing involving a different tactic.

This was a completely new development in motor transport and all the innovations were novel to us. It was the first time too we ever had a vehicle driven on all eight wheels, with a braking system that acted on the rear trailer first and so on back down the trailers to the prime-mover itself. 

But of course, the most striking part of its design, in regard to Australian conditions, was its ability to negotiate sharp turns.

In Alice Springs the road train was loaded for its first commercial trip, with a load of timber and corrugated iron for the first building to be erected in Tennant Creek: a pub.

The Government Roadtrain, as it became known, was purchased by the Australian Government later that year and remained in central Australia. Operated by the Department of the Interior, the Government Roadtrain was used to supply outback regions,  supplementing and leading to the demise of the cameleers who had before then been responsible for supplying outback Australia. 

The Afghan and Pakistani cameleers charged two shillings and sixpence per ton per mile, but the Government Roadtrain could charge as little as six and a half pence per ton per mile. 

During the dry season, May to October, the Government Roadtrain was used to supply remote communities and isolated cattle stations in the Victoria River, Wave Hill and Borroloola regions. 

During the wet season, November to April, the Government Roadtrain was used in central Australia, carting supplies to goldfields, cattle, windmills, boring equipment and supplies to remote cattle stations, wool from remote sheep stations and building material to outlying communities. 

An additional two trailers were built for the Government Roadtrain and in government service it covered over 1,280,000 miles (2,060,000km) carrying loads of up to 45 long tons (46 tonnes) – well beyond the original design specifications – before it was sold to a timber dealer in 1946.

One Roadtrain is known to have been exported to Russia in 1935 and there may have been a second one, as well.

The Australian Government Roadtrain at the National Road Transport Hall of Fame in Alice Springs is believed to be the only surviving AEC Roadtrain example.

Road freight emerges in the NT

Locally known as ‘The Track’ or ‘The Bitumen’, the Stuart Highway alignment was the Territory’s most valuable legacy of World War II. Before the War, what is now the Stuart Highway was little more than a track beside the Overland Telegraph Line.

Known as the North-South road, it followed in the footsteps of John McDouall Stuart who crossed the continent in 1862. Darwin, key to Australia’s northern wartime defence, was reliant on supplies from sea-lanes, which were vulnerable to enemy attack by sea and air. An overland supply route was needed to sustain the vital northern port.

The Commonwealth Government implemented a program to upgrade the track and by mid-1939 a coordinated military road and rail freight service had been introduced between the railheads at Alice Springs and Larrimah, around 530km south of Darwin. The rough track was turned into an unsealed highway in the space of a few months.

By September 1940, the first military convoys were taking men and supplies through to Darwin. It was a four-day journey from Alice Springs to Birdum, near Larrimah and each night the North-South convoys were accommodated in staging camps a day’s drive apart at Barrow Creek, Banka Banka, Elliott and Larrimah.

Servicemen and women were carried up the highway in the hundreds of thousands and millions of tonnes of supplies, critical to the war effort, were hauled up the track.

However, by mid-1942 the all-weather North-South Road had begun to disintegrate under the relentless pounding of military transport columns. The possibility of building a rail link between Alice Springs and Birdum – around 1000km – was ruled-out as the cost was too excessive. A decision was made in August 1942 to rebuild and seal the road.

The sealed road was post-war boon for road transport in the NT. Rail freight from Adelaide travelled up the Ghan, as it had done in great quantities during the War and was transferred to trucks in Alice Springs.

Dave Baldock

It’s probable that a young David Baldock was the first to run NT road trains after Word War II, although they were hardly compliant with any road rules, even back then.

The long wheelbase prime movers were Hercules-powered Federal and 250 Cummins-powered Diamond T War surplus tank transporters that became short-tray rigid trucks. Behind that 6×4 was generally a tandem axle flat-top, with single-axle dolly, followed by up to six single-axle flat tops, with single-axle dollies.

The couplings were bullet-proof pintle hooks and eyes that were simple to operate, but hardly good for tracking accuracy. The combination of all this slackness in the successive couplings must have required great steering concentration on the part of the drivers, to avoid catastrophic ‘snaking’.

Their job was to haul around 100 tons per trip of copper ore from Tennant Creek to the rail head at Alice Springs. That must have been interesting, to say the least, with only three braked axles out of 18! We can’t imagine coming down the range into Alice Springs at that train weight, in bottom cogs in both boxes and with virtually no brakes.

Mind you, the road speeds weren’t high, with governed top velocity being around 25mph, via five-speed main boxes and four-speed joeys.

The road north of The Alice was much better than it had been before WWII improvements that facilitated supplies being ferried to Darwin, but it was still something of a wild-west township, with administration to match. Hence, David Baldock’s ability to couple trailers without brakes behind his prime movers!

The trailers also lacked clearance lights and the last trailer had only a manually-switched battery-operated red tail light.

By War’s end Dave Baldock had been in the NT for10 years, having kicked off his road transport business with a pair of Ford tray-back trucks that he drove single-handedly, our research suggests. He achieved this by driving the first truck to Tennant Creek, flying back to Alice Springs and driving the second truck to Tennant Creek and then driving back to Alice with the second truck piggy-backed on the first.

What a guy!

Dave Baldock became a foundation member of the Territory Transport Association and a shareholder in Co-ord Transport.  However, in 1955 he moved to Adelaide for treatment for severe back pain and later sold out his business interests in Alice Springs. He was a Foundation Member of the National Road Transport Hall of Fame and died in April, 2001.

The road outfront of the National Road Transport Hall of Fame was named ‘Dave Baldock Drive’ in his honour.

Bertha

Australian Kurt Johannsen is recognised as the inventor of the modern road train in the early Post-Word War II years. He had a background in remote area road transport around the Red Centre, having driven his own trucks since age 15.

Provided with some financing and inspired by the tracking abilities of the Government Roadtrain, Johannsen began construction of his road train design, using a War-surplus ex-US-Army Diamond T M20 tank-transporter prime mover that he named Bertha. This truck was powered by a Hercules DXFE diesel with peak power of 185bhp (138kW), driving through a four-speed main box and three-speed auxiliary.

In Kurt’s first road train this prime mover towed two self-tracking trailers. Both wheel sets on each trailer could steer and could negotiate tight and narrow tracks and creek crossings.

English brands

In the 21st century it’s logical to think that Kurt’s Diamond T and post-War American trucks were the forerunners of North American brands getting into the Australian road transport scene, but that’s not what happened.

Although the USA had been Australia’s powerful ally in the Pacific theatre of World War II, our roots were firmly embedded in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. Before the War and afterwards, British vehicles dominated the Australian car and truck market. There were some North American trucks on Aussie roads, but not many and their mainly petrol engines were very thirsty.

Kurt Johannsen’s road train showed what could be done, using modern trucks up front of multiple trailers, but when the ex-army US trucks wore out the next commercial road train generation was all-British:  Thornycroft, AEC, Leyland and Foden.

Two specially-built Rotinoff Viscounts also hauled roadtrain trailers around the Outback.

The British trucks had preferred diesel engines – albeit low-horsepower by today’s standards – and bullet-proof hub reduction drive tandem axles.

It wasn’t until the late 1950s that US-origin trucks began to make their mark with diesel powered road train specification trucks – mainly Macks and Kenworths – that displaced underpowered British models.

The Brits no longer make trucks, but European high-horsepower prime movers – Volvo, Scania, MAN and Mercedes-Benz –  have taken some road train business away from the North Americans.

Co-Ord Transport

Based in Alice Springs, the Coordinated Road Rail Service later became known as Co-Ord Transport and was under contract to the Commonwealth Railways. Co-Ord was the road link between the end of the line at Alice Springs and the Larrimah terminus of the North Australia Railway.

For an insight into the life and times of a Co-Ord Transport driver in the 1960s, try to find a copy of Graham Pyper’s excellent little book, When Co-Ord Was King – ISBN 0-9757946-0-4. This no-frills record of fun and games on the roads will definitely offend the overly-sensitive!

After the closure of the North Australia Railway in 1976, Co-Ord set up a road transport depot in Darwin. However, competition became fierce, with the advent of more road train operators, changes to rail operations and the plan for a rail link directly to Darwin, so Co-Ord eventually closed down.

The Buntine era

Noel Buntine was a freight contractor to the Co-Ord Transport Group in Alice Springs, in the 1950s, but he later expanded his business into hauling supplies to Victoria River district stations and transporting cattle to the Wyndham abattoir.

Noel experienced the transition from European trucks to American ones, gradually replacing Commers and Fodens with Macks. It was tough going, on property tracks and ‘main’ roads that weren’t much better, but the business expanded.

In 1960, Noel Buntine established Buntine Roadways. He was a skilled lobbyist and helped the adoption of triple-trailer road trains. His capacity to handle mobs of cattle was legendary and, by 1980, Buntine Roadways was the largest road train operator in Australia.

Without much fanfare he sold Buntine Roadways fleet of road trains and depots in Katherine, Alice Springs, Wyndham, Tennant Creek and Mount Isa to a NSW grain grower, but the new owners lacked Noel’s smarts and the receivers soon marched in.

The downturn happened so fast that many industry observers thought Noel Buntine had gone broke, because they hadn’t heard about the sale of Buntine Roadways.

Noel Buntine bought the business back from the receivers and renamed it Road Trains of Australia (RTA). Within two years, his new Mack fleet had helped return the business to profitability.

In late 1985 Noel Buntine sold the business NT fuel distributor Dicky David and Ken Warriner of Consolidated Pastoral Company.

RTA continued to grow, with acquisitions including John Bain Transport, Tanami Transport, Kloppers Transport, Barkly Transport, Baskets Transport and Victoria River Transport.

In 1993 Jim Cooper of Gulf Transport Group and Mick Flynn of Flynn Petroleum joined forces to buy RTA from Dicky David and Ken Warriner.

Tanami Transport

Another pivotal road train operator was Tanami Transport that has operated as a livestock cartage business from the same depot in Alice Springs since the early 1960s. 

The business began as RPM Transport in which Richard (Dick) Rogers, Martin Petrick and Joe Mengel were co-owners, but eventually Dick bought out the other two. 

As with Co-Ord and Buntines, the fleet in the early days consisted of European brands, pulling single-deck stock trailers across very rough, ill-maintained bush roads. Some Internationals joined the fleet, but by the early 1970s, Dick started buying Kenworth and Mack heavy duty prime movers and double-deck stock trailers, which modernised the fleet.

KW SARs: 350 Cummins (Stuart Lawless) and 400 Cummins (Jack Anderson)

RPM Transport became Tanami Transport in the mid-1970s. 

When Dick and his wife Gwendolyne purchased Arapunya Station, their sons Alan and David Rogers took over ownership and operations of Tanami Transport. 

In 1986, the boys sold out to Dicky David and Ken Warriner, but Alan continued to run the show. In 1991, Alan and his parents purchased the business back from Dicky and Ken. It then remained in the Rogers family until Oct 2007, after which it was bought by a local businessman.

Gascoyne Trading

This long-lived company celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2024. The company that became famous as Gascoyne Trading is now part of the giant Toll empire, but its origin was back in 1924.

Started by aviation pioneers Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Anderson, who bought a small transport business in Carnarvon, Gascoyne Transport Company became a successful trucking business that Kingsford Smith and Anderson were able to sell for enough money to finance their aviation exploits.

The story goes that while flying around Western Australia in the early 1920s, ‘Smithy’ thought that he could improve considerably on the performance of camel trains that were then hauling wool from far-flung properties into Carnarvon.

Smithy and Anderson bought Tom Carlin’s business in Carnarvon handmade it the Gascoyne Transport Company and picked up a lucrative mail contract. Smithy’s reputation didn’t hurt business growth either and business expanded, so Gascoyne bought new trucks and employed drivers.

Even with the dodgy to non-existent road network of the 1920s, wool was hauled in to Carnarvon in around half the time that the camels took and supplies were delivered to stations at the same time.

The Gascoyne Transport Co was highly profitable and within two years all the trucks were paid for. Both Smithy and Anderson longed to get back into the air, so they sold Gascoyne and became airborne once more.

Their company changed hands several times, before being known as the Gascoyne Trading Co, in 1935.

Under Wesfarmers ownership, Gascoyne Trading Company became one of the pioneers of Western Australia’s road train scene, when these combinations were finally allowed to operate in the late 1960s. Regular destinations from Perth were Carnarvon, Exmouth, Port Hedland, Broome, Wyndham and Kununurra.

Jim Cooper and Gulf Transport

Kurt Johannsen is recognised as the inventor of the modern Australian road train and Jim Cooper (1941-2022) was certainly the man who took the concept to its limits.

In February 1972, Jim Cooper acquired Gulf Transport, which had two depots: one in Alice Springs and one in Darwin.  It had a ‘fleet’ of two AEC Mammoth Majors, a Volvo G88 and a few very worn trailers.

Despite well-organised opposition from Co-Ord Transport, it was not long until Jim expanded into the bulk tipper haulage business and eventual domination of it. The key to that was working with Bernie Ostermeyer from Tristar, to build flexi-tippers.

Bernie’s innovative trailer design was optimised for the side-tipping required with multiple trailers. Rear tipping is fine for rigids or single trailers, but quick cycle times for road train tippers are greatly improved if side-tipping is employed.

Conventional rigid-bodied side tippers had load limitations imposed by the need to keep the load centre of gravity within the wheel track width when tipping – or risk a massive roll-over. Bernie’s solution was a flexible metal trailer interior that deformed progressively when tipping, to improve stability.

In 1985 Gulf Transport won a seven-year contract carting silver, lead and zinc concentrates from Woodcutters Mine to Fort Hill Wharf with innovative flexi-tipper, triple road train combinations. 

This job was a turning point for the company. Gulf Transport and the flexi-tippers began hauling lead and zinc out of Cadjibut in Western Australia to Wyndham and Derby ports, as well as hauling overburden at the Argyle Diamond mine in Western Australia.

Jim then set up Bulkhaul, to work at the remote Granites site in the middle of the Tanami Desert, for North Flinders Mining.

The apex of Jim Cooper’s road train initiatives was the year-2000 development of 280-tonnes-payload, six-trailer road trains, with diesel-power amidships. The prime mover’s Cummins 15-litre engine was supplemented by a 400 hp Cummins M11 engine in one of the trailers.

These units were at the upper train mass limit of the Kenworth C500 that was basically a road-legal prime mover, so Jim Cooper and his Brisbane-based Powertrans engineering team developed a purpose-built prime mover and powered-trailer road train combination.

The custom-designed and built prime mover had a central driving position and the engine out front, with tilting bonnet access. The cab also tilted, for easy access to the transmission. 

Two hundred litres of additional engine oil capacity was incorporated, as was automated chassis greasing.

Murray Clifford photo

The truck had a fabricated I-beam chassis; front air suspension; walking beam at the rear and rode on 14.00 R25 tyres. The 50-tonnes capacity Axletech SPRC drive axles had final drive ratios of 12.69:1. 

This road train was powered by two Cummins QSK19 engines: one in the custom-designed prime mover and the other in one of the trailers. After successful operation at the Fortescue iron ore mine in the Pilbara region in Western Australia these units were replicated at several sites.

Each 1520hp quad-trailer road train was capable of hauling 350 tonnes of payload, with an all-up mass of 500 tonnes. Engine cooling was aided by massive radiators and 300-litre coolant capacity. Transmissions were Allison six-speed autos, synchronised by electronic control units.

At its peak, Jim Cooper’s twin-powered road train fleet numbered 100 combinations.

Murray Clifford photo

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