Truck Features
Malaysia’s Ghost Trucks
When HV visited Malaysia in 2004 we came across a wide variety of heavy trucks, from state-of-the-art European tractors pulling petroleum product tankers, to unregistered ‘ghost’ trucks working on construction sites.
The Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board controlled the number of truck operating licences in Malaysia, for trucks with gross mass rating above five tonnes. This Board had the common sense to insist that trucks hauling dangerous goods were as safe as possible, but allowed plenty of slack for largely off-road operators.
Like many developing truck markets Malaysia had a wide mix of vehicle types, from the latest disc-braked, Volvo FM12 380s pulling petroleum tankers to steel-cowl types of advanced age, graced with hand-built wooden ‘cabs’ and bodywork.
We saw obvious parallels with post-USSR Eastern Europe where many truck owners found themselves in a price trap: their outdated vehicles had no resale or trade-in value, so they had little choice but to run them into the ground.
Most of the road-registered, but old-style, Malaysian trucks we saw were at least 30 years of age – many were much older – and had none of the creature comforts that modern-truck drivers take for granted.
For example, ’climate control’ was done by opening (or removing entirely) the vestigial wooden half-doors and noise deadening was effected by muffs or ear plugs. Steering was ‘armstrong’ – strong arms – design, with power assistance gained by positioning the feet at vantage points in the cab interior.
Malaysia had yet another trucking tier – that occupied by so-called ‘ghost’ trucks.
Ghost trucks were outside the normal road transport system – hence the name – and some weren’t even road-registered, let alone licensed. Some road-going ‘ghosts’ worked outside the licence system, but were being progressively detected by the authorities.
The next layer of ghost trucks was found on construction sites all over the country and they did a sterling job transporting material from earthworks to fill sites. Some had stripped-out Japanese cabs, but others sported a Blitz-type, flat-sheet body that was purpose built for off-road work.
There was no standard specification for a ghost truck, because they were recycled road trucks that were too tired to compete with modern machines on linehaul and distribution tasks.
The ones we spotted on road construction were unregistered and confirmed mainly to on-site duties, but they mingled with regular truck traffic at certain cross-over points, where the police and road authorities seemed to tolerate these intrusions.
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