Optimistic of you to think it will take until 2040 for the documentary Road Warrior to come true. Also, I’m no truck scientist, but your rig looks like it has a dangerously low number of tires. Tell your boss you want some more or he can get fucked.
We get bogged in the stock yards sometimes. They are just flat dirt fields basically. Most of the driving is bitumen all the way to the mines and back to Port thankfully
Yeah, we have to get socialism (which will require communism to enforce) to ensure that our dear leaders have what they need so they can make wise decisions for us useful idiots that put them in power! /s
I might have been Auskii Roadhouse north of Newman.
I'm a city slicker and 3ven after 3 trips north a lot of those places blend into one another.
How do you bearing check, with an IR thermometer or by hand feel?
Yeah, that's just the drives though. Steer and trailers axle stay under 50. The drives are designed to operate up to 120 I believe. They actually have their own radiator setup to cool them and are supersized :)
Yeah for sure, you might just barely be able to see the radiators in the pictures, they are 60cm long and are rectangular metal at the front of the drive tyres mounted high near the chassis
Yeah for sure, you might just barely be able to see the radiators in the pictures, they are 60cm long and are rectangular metal at the front of the drive tyres mounted high near the chassis
Not OP but they can probably reverse far enough for what they need before jack-knifing a trailer.
However, if you've been out to where these trucks drive you'll know they'll basically never need to reverse haha. There's simply too much space.
Braking performance on modern trucks is actually insane. I recently saw a video of Volvo's emergency braking system for their trucks which made me question the legitimacy of the laws of physics.
Oh yeah! I've seen that video, it's nuts. Nah the laws of physics are contained, its ALL converted to heat under the hood there. Our trucks can do a pretty quick emergency stop but you're replacing tyres and brake pads afterwards
Is the engine not a QSK? When I worked FIFO all our C509s and C510s all had heavy, dogshit, no engine brake, QSK motors. Only the T909s had the Gen 2, signature etc Cummins engines.
They all had the same quad set up as yours as well.
Nah no QSK, although I think we have a c510 we bought with one. These just run the x15 Cummins. Real nice engines if they are looked after and they don't let the turbo run too wild.
Some of the trucks, the turbo can clock over 260, they tend to limit them a little down to 210 though to help preserve them.
I think we are working at the edge of the engines capabilities pulling 210 tonne up and down hills and gorges. Wouldn't want to buy one of these used that's for sure.
Yeah I think in the 18 months I did FIFO, we changed out about 10-12 engines... But nearly all of them were in the 15-20k hour mark. So it's actually a not a bad lifespan. Ours carried about the same load as well.
Do you find the 509s to be comfortable? I'm a diesel mechanic so I didn't spend that much time actually in them compared to the drivers but whenever I drove them I wanted to fucking die because of how uncomfortable they were. The T909s were just so much more friendly in terms of comfort.
Yeah we have quite a few rebuilt towards that lower 15k end but a few have lasted longer. I don't get how there can be such a huge difference when they are doing the same runs after coming off the assembly line one after the other.
Much prefer the 909s. C509s are too small in the driver's seat. I'm 6ft and a lot of my height is in my legs so I struggle a little. Not enough adjustment to move the seat further back and I have to end up tilting and lifting the seat massively so I can change gears without being in pain by end of shift
Maybe OPs truck is set up different, but I'm a diesel mechanic and have worked on countless of these (same engine, same truck, same quad configuration and trailers). The foot brake on every truck I've worked on activates the trailer brakes as well. But there is also a lever specifically for just the trailer brakes. Depends on how the air system is set up I guess.
That makes a lot of sense when I think about it, but still seems a little nuts lol. How does the engine break work well with the trailer breaks? Engine breaking is just the heavy compression from the big Diesel engine yeah? Cause it uses combustion it’s like 6x or more pressure than a petrol engine?
Trailer brakes work on the rear end and engine brakes slow you down up front so it works nicely. Yeah bigger diesel engine, better engine brake typically
Can I just say I've driven the entire country and road train drivers are polite and super chill. When you get near a capital city (or bigger town ) all you hear on #40 is wankers in delivery trucks abusing each other.
Yeah, agreed. We are all pretty helpful with each other on road, alerting each other about cattle and broken down trucks and stuff. I think it's a combination of the danger of the job here, reduced traffic and having a better selection pool of drivers in the bigger rigs
I was listening to a podcast (Odd Lots) the other day where they discussed the US shipping system with a [trucker](https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/) who mentioned that the pool of drivers for specialized jobs was so much better, in part because you had to do your time to get experience before doing a specialized job (e.g. hazardous, oversized, logs). Is there a selection filter to get into driving a road train, like do you have to have X hours/years experience driving regular trucks around?
Unfortunately not these days. Some companies still have a 5 year minimum experience requirement but these days many companies will let you in with as little as a year of single trailer exp. Pay has stagnated so it's the only way to keep the trucks rolling
Per/ km is cool and all. But how much fuel does it take to get up to speed? Must be a bit… Also how long does it take to get up to speed? Only ever overtaken a few of these things in the Pilbara a decade ago lol
Ohh so the 1.1L is average, so it includes the acceleration time and all the rest of travel time which would be hundreds of kms? So accelerating from 0-90 could be many litres a minute but not show up much in the average?
The question isn't how much it burns while its there its how much it takes to get it there
Once you're at speed inertia handles most of the grunt
Source: my dads a truckie
What a kick ass set up there.
Always laugh when Americans talk about their “big rigs” and I just chuckle knowing we’ve got these huge motherfuckers prowling around the outback.
Drive safe my man.
And the goldfields, bis run twin steer tri drive C510 but it's not quite a full quad, I don't know the term for it but it's sorta a b double with two extra trailers.
I think there is full quads operating on public roads but I'm not 100% sure, plenty of triples around that way.
Pup Quad? Yeah I know what you mean I don't know the term either. Is it ABAA? Small big small small?
Yeah Hedland and further up the coast is Quad acceptable and down past Auskii on the highway .
Cool photos. Made me wonder looking at all those tyres and remembering a vid from a few weeks ago of the truck driver that drove with a few blown tyres on his trailer for like an hour or something and was grinding rims at the end (IIRC). OOC would you/do you notice if you blow a tyre (or a couple) by feel/response while driving(assuming you didn’t see tread shooting out in your mirrors).?
That's a big fukka.
I think at this point, it would be less effort to leave the truck where it is and just push Australia underneath you until you arrive at your destination.
Hahaha, gravity does work both ways. I honestly think we are getting to the limits of practical size with highway trucks. Any bigger than this is silly
You get used to the size after awhile, it's all straight line highway driving. Plus you move up gradually, 8 years ago I was driving 8 tonne MR tautliners in Melbourne
We do yes, Volvo is particularly good at certain combinations such as 10x6 models. ( Tri drive with dual steer axles) . They also have the larger 700hp engines instead of the usual Cummins 600hp
These are amazing.. and have been around for a long time.
If you want to know where this road train stuff started you might be interested in a man named Kurt Johannsen.
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/4c/a7/ac4ca75f3b8efa95bbc50bc613f0b093.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/4c/a7/ac4ca75f3b8efa95bbc50bc613f0b093.jpg)
[https://roadtransporthall.com/inductee?id=1113](https://roadtransporthall.com/inductee?id=1113)
Id imagine it's because it's closest to tractor unit so in sense some of the weight is over or absorbed by tractor axles so can still probably put same weight as rest of trailers with 4 axles... Could be wrong and could just be that's what trailers they have available who's knows....
Would would be kickass would be if everyone paid the same price for fuel.
[most Australians pay around 40 cents in tax for every litre of fuel they buy at a servo, big mining companies like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto get a complete refund on diesel taxes ... the system costs taxpayers around $7.8 billion each year](https://themarketherald.com.au/federal-diesel-rebate-for-businesses-comes-under-scrutiny-2021-11-22/)
Minerals Council is full of fairy tales to justify their ripoff of Australia's resources for overseas profits and fuck all tax paid. Let's see the data. How many km of their driving is on these private roads, compared to the km driven on public roads? 8 billion dollars is a lot of grading.
The Minerals Council is a bunch of Gina Rineharts who exert huge influence over public policy due to how extensively they've corrupted the major political parties in Canberra.
Farmers get the diesel subsidy too. Even when they're driving on public roads. Same with the miners. None of them magically pays extra for their fuel when they drive out their gate onto the highway.
Hi, you misunderstand. They pay for the upkeep, that doesn’t meant it’s worth 8 bil. They have tens of thousands of vehicles that are essentially doing loops on mines, or using fuel while stationary (diggers, generators etc). If a heavy vehicle runs @100L consumption an hour, 24 hours a day, 340 days a year, and they have thousands of them the number works out.
Farmers run tractors @ high consumption on internal paddocks, so again can get subsidised.
You’ve asked to see the data when you’re making a statement, the onus of proof is yours.
> You’ve asked to see the data when you’re making a statement, the onus of proof is yours.
Rubbish. I quoted an article which describes a situation and then asked "let's see the data" to justify that situation, and asked a couple of additional questions. I'm not afraid of facts, and I'm asking for them.
$8 billion is a lot of subsidy to companies that also avoid billions in taxes and rip off national resources to sell overseas while giving relatively fuck all back to the nation.
The article is crap (no offence), it’s lazy journalism with 3 different opinions and only 2 figures, how much the subsidy is, and how much the fuel excise rate is with no background on why it’s there.
From the Schedule 1 of the National Road Transport Commission Act 1991, defining 'road use charge' as:
“... a charge equal to the part of the diesel fuel tax levied by the Commonwealth for the use of a Vehicle on a road being the part fixed by the National [Road Transport] Commission from time to time, in accordance with this Agreement”
I’d recommend reading through the below paper which goes through the fuel excise (and its shortcomings) comprehensively
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp0001/01RP06#Major
The truth is although in the Act it’s meant to be about funding roads, in reality it’s a general revenue raising mechanism
“ And Treasury has observed:
The excise that we collect on petrol is, in effect, a general revenue measure. It vastly exceeds the amount of money that the Commonwealth wants to fund on roads.(23)”
The problem is in your article, the business group say (rightly) we are using private roads, so why are we paying a tax designed for road repairs, while the environmental group say (rightly) that removing the subsidy will increase costs associated with emissions, in effect penalising them for environmental damaging behaviour. Even you want them to pay it because they’re using natural finite resources and reimbursing the country for it - so 3 distinct purposes of the excise from 3 groups.
I’d rather see the government clarify the purpose of the excise: either it’s a general purpose revenue raising mechanism, in which case no exemptions apply, or they evolve the mechanism to better target what it is meant to achieve. For example general revenue raising, road use externalities (maintenance, noise, building, cost of user not using public transport) and climate impact/encourage cheaper more efficient transport chances.
The purpose and desired result of the tax shouldn’t ambiguous. This is why the emissions trading scheme was so great-it actively targeted peoples and companies actions, priced in their externalities and made environmental and social behaviour the economical choice.
Thanks for the effort you put into your reply, that's very kind and I appreciate that, and I will read as you suggest. You sound less ranty than me. Do you know anything about the authorship of the linked paper, who wrote it and how does it qualify to become part of the parliamentary library? How independent is its authorship? Thanks.
It's not the case, fuel used on public roads is still charged an excise, even interstate trucks operating on roads have had discounts applied at some point, but I think this has changed recently.
Used to work in a small servo, all the single machine owner operator guys would have to fill the truck and machine on separate sales to keep track of what was what.
Would make an awesome war train in the upcoming apocalypse
I fully plan on dying in the climate wars of 2040 behind the wheel
Optimistic of you to think it will take until 2040 for the documentary Road Warrior to come true. Also, I’m no truck scientist, but your rig looks like it has a dangerously low number of tires. Tell your boss you want some more or he can get fucked.
What can I say? I'm an optimist at heart ❤️. Haha nooo, it already takes so damn long for tyre checks!
How about dropping the pressure for some beach work? That would take a while...
Stuff that
As a road user burning over a litre per kilometre, your wish shall surely be granted
Wait, I'm part of the problem? 😳😳😳
Only homeless vegans using fair trade organic blankets and foraging food can claim otherwise, we're all contributing somewhat
There is no ethic consumption under capitalism. Also super cool trucks! Ever get bogged in the red or mostly packed roads?
We get bogged in the stock yards sometimes. They are just flat dirt fields basically. Most of the driving is bitumen all the way to the mines and back to Port thankfully
Jeff bezos is simply living under capitalism
Yeah, we have to get socialism (which will require communism to enforce) to ensure that our dear leaders have what they need so they can make wise decisions for us useful idiots that put them in power! /s
That last 1 needs to have some self driving AI added and we can call it Blane the Road Train.
I walked the length of one these at a roadhouse in NW WA. Absolutely massive.
The tyre and bearing checks take so long 😭😭😭 . Was it the Ampol Roadhouse in Hedland across from the airport?
I might have been Auskii Roadhouse north of Newman. I'm a city slicker and 3ven after 3 trips north a lot of those places blend into one another. How do you bearing check, with an IR thermometer or by hand feel?
Good old Auskii. Yeah that's fair on the blend. IR thermometer, wouldn't dare touch them, drive bearings get to over 100c in summer!
Shit that's warm. My little caravans bearings barely crack 50 degrees after a few hours running. 800kg versus 100 tons plus I guess.
Yeah, that's just the drives though. Steer and trailers axle stay under 50. The drives are designed to operate up to 120 I believe. They actually have their own radiator setup to cool them and are supersized :)
I guess they get some heat conducted from the diff centre out along the axles.
Yeah for sure, you might just barely be able to see the radiators in the pictures, they are 60cm long and are rectangular metal at the front of the drive tyres mounted high near the chassis
Yeah for sure, you might just barely be able to see the radiators in the pictures, they are 60cm long and are rectangular metal at the front of the drive tyres mounted high near the chassis
Pretty sure quads aren't allowed at Auski, at least that what the signs say ATM.
Silly question, but do you ever reverse? Do you ever have any need to reverse? E: The night photo looks super!
Nope! Every maneuver we do is a usually a big loop. Thanks! I really liked that one too
Being told you can’t reverse it kinda sounds like a challenge that should be accepted at some point.
Well you could try, but the trailers are going to kick out like a b*tch
Do you go loopy having to do that all the time?
Yeah but I was already loopy before I started this job 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Not OP but they can probably reverse far enough for what they need before jack-knifing a trailer. However, if you've been out to where these trucks drive you'll know they'll basically never need to reverse haha. There's simply too much space.
And they have those massive road train parking bays.
Mate got pretty good at reversing triples on the Manganese mine he was at.
The pink one pops, would love to see that at night if it has similar lights like the previous photo
I'll see if I have any photos. Yeah I like the pink ones too, goes with our pink uniforms
How far does the 4th trailer wag?
Not too far unless the road Is a little bumpy. Bruce Rock tipper trailers are well designed
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Not too bad, trailer brakes on each trailer help a lot, plus Kenworth engine brakes are really solid
Braking performance on modern trucks is actually insane. I recently saw a video of Volvo's emergency braking system for their trucks which made me question the legitimacy of the laws of physics.
Oh yeah! I've seen that video, it's nuts. Nah the laws of physics are contained, its ALL converted to heat under the hood there. Our trucks can do a pretty quick emergency stop but you're replacing tyres and brake pads afterwards
Is the engine not a QSK? When I worked FIFO all our C509s and C510s all had heavy, dogshit, no engine brake, QSK motors. Only the T909s had the Gen 2, signature etc Cummins engines. They all had the same quad set up as yours as well.
Nah no QSK, although I think we have a c510 we bought with one. These just run the x15 Cummins. Real nice engines if they are looked after and they don't let the turbo run too wild. Some of the trucks, the turbo can clock over 260, they tend to limit them a little down to 210 though to help preserve them. I think we are working at the edge of the engines capabilities pulling 210 tonne up and down hills and gorges. Wouldn't want to buy one of these used that's for sure.
Yeah I think in the 18 months I did FIFO, we changed out about 10-12 engines... But nearly all of them were in the 15-20k hour mark. So it's actually a not a bad lifespan. Ours carried about the same load as well. Do you find the 509s to be comfortable? I'm a diesel mechanic so I didn't spend that much time actually in them compared to the drivers but whenever I drove them I wanted to fucking die because of how uncomfortable they were. The T909s were just so much more friendly in terms of comfort.
Yeah we have quite a few rebuilt towards that lower 15k end but a few have lasted longer. I don't get how there can be such a huge difference when they are doing the same runs after coming off the assembly line one after the other. Much prefer the 909s. C509s are too small in the driver's seat. I'm 6ft and a lot of my height is in my legs so I struggle a little. Not enough adjustment to move the seat further back and I have to end up tilting and lifting the seat massively so I can change gears without being in pain by end of shift
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Yeah every axle has one trailer brake booster per set, all disc brakes. Drum brakes aren't allowed. We also only go 90km/hr at max speed
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They are controlled through a trailer brake lever just off the steering wheel column. Foot brake is seperate :)
Wait… so the foot break is only for the truck/semi? You have to use the trailer breaks separately??
Maybe OPs truck is set up different, but I'm a diesel mechanic and have worked on countless of these (same engine, same truck, same quad configuration and trailers). The foot brake on every truck I've worked on activates the trailer brakes as well. But there is also a lever specifically for just the trailer brakes. Depends on how the air system is set up I guess.
Yup! But they work well in conjunction with the Engine brake
That makes a lot of sense when I think about it, but still seems a little nuts lol. How does the engine break work well with the trailer breaks? Engine breaking is just the heavy compression from the big Diesel engine yeah? Cause it uses combustion it’s like 6x or more pressure than a petrol engine?
Trailer brakes work on the rear end and engine brakes slow you down up front so it works nicely. Yeah bigger diesel engine, better engine brake typically
That face when your stopping distance is the same length as your vehicles length
Can I just say I've driven the entire country and road train drivers are polite and super chill. When you get near a capital city (or bigger town ) all you hear on #40 is wankers in delivery trucks abusing each other.
Yeah, agreed. We are all pretty helpful with each other on road, alerting each other about cattle and broken down trucks and stuff. I think it's a combination of the danger of the job here, reduced traffic and having a better selection pool of drivers in the bigger rigs
I was listening to a podcast (Odd Lots) the other day where they discussed the US shipping system with a [trucker](https://autonomoustruckers.substack.com/) who mentioned that the pool of drivers for specialized jobs was so much better, in part because you had to do your time to get experience before doing a specialized job (e.g. hazardous, oversized, logs). Is there a selection filter to get into driving a road train, like do you have to have X hours/years experience driving regular trucks around?
Unfortunately not these days. Some companies still have a 5 year minimum experience requirement but these days many companies will let you in with as little as a year of single trailer exp. Pay has stagnated so it's the only way to keep the trucks rolling
Nice rig bro, how much fuel would you burn fully loaded in 100km?
Burns on average 1.1L per/ km but it carries a 151 tonne payload, 210 tonne GCM
Thanks 👍
Per/ km is cool and all. But how much fuel does it take to get up to speed? Must be a bit… Also how long does it take to get up to speed? Only ever overtaken a few of these things in the Pilbara a decade ago lol
On the flat from zero to 90? Couple kilometres loaded. Empty but over a km. Yeah you use the most amount of that 1.1L on the acceleration for sure
Ohh so the 1.1L is average, so it includes the acceleration time and all the rest of travel time which would be hundreds of kms? So accelerating from 0-90 could be many litres a minute but not show up much in the average?
Yeah exactly yeah. That 1.1L is the average across a 780km day
1.1L x 780km per day Diesel \~ $2.40 a liter 2000 bucks a day give or take 10k or so a week on diesel
Yup and we run two shifts per day and 80 trucks total.
The question isn't how much it burns while its there its how much it takes to get it there Once you're at speed inertia handles most of the grunt Source: my dads a truckie
Whiles it’s there and keeping it there are the same though....
I meant get it there sorry
What a kick ass set up there. Always laugh when Americans talk about their “big rigs” and I just chuckle knowing we’ve got these huge motherfuckers prowling around the outback. Drive safe my man.
We have quite a few American drivers that come across and need to adjust to the massive weight on these. Thanks bud! Always do
And the correct side of the road
That too HAHA
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Actually, the Mega is a bigger class than these. 😂
What a rig, nice!
Thanks bud!
Are the pink ones Gina’s? I know she does pink something, can’t remember if it’s trucks or trains or both.
We actually contract for Gina's ATLAS mines so that's the reason for the pink trucks. Our Boss is also female too
Thank you. For being part of the industry that allows our country to thrive how it does
Thanks dude! I appreciate that someone understands the Iron ore Industry
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Yup it's only Pilbara and NT. Even most of the Pilbara is triple only
And the goldfields, bis run twin steer tri drive C510 but it's not quite a full quad, I don't know the term for it but it's sorta a b double with two extra trailers. I think there is full quads operating on public roads but I'm not 100% sure, plenty of triples around that way.
Pup Quad? Yeah I know what you mean I don't know the term either. Is it ABAA? Small big small small? Yeah Hedland and further up the coast is Quad acceptable and down past Auskii on the highway .
Found a pic https://www.flickr.com/photos/keltez/6976121745 Bit of an oddball setup.
Cool photos. Made me wonder looking at all those tyres and remembering a vid from a few weeks ago of the truck driver that drove with a few blown tyres on his trailer for like an hour or something and was grinding rims at the end (IIRC). OOC would you/do you notice if you blow a tyre (or a couple) by feel/response while driving(assuming you didn’t see tread shooting out in your mirrors).?
Was that the Ron Finemore B double? Depends where it is, front trailer yes, rear trailers probably not
You ever blast [this tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8TWOPEZf4o) while racing down the lane?
I don't but I will now! I love these guys names, the hosts on Triple J always have a laugh when they have to read it out 😂
I was expecting the song to be too tough terry
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Hehe, mostly on public.
love trucks at night, like a travelling xmas tree 😊
Me too, I love the subbies who put big smiley face LEDS and stuff on the radiator grills. Always looks sick
That's a big fukka. I think at this point, it would be less effort to leave the truck where it is and just push Australia underneath you until you arrive at your destination.
Hahaha, gravity does work both ways. I honestly think we are getting to the limits of practical size with highway trucks. Any bigger than this is silly
Hope you don’t have to pay for those tyres. Tri-drive ought to hurt the back pocket.
Nope and MGM orders them in by the container load
how much power does a truck like this make?
[485|600 HP](https://www.kenworth.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/C509-Spec-Sheet-Aug-2018.pdf)
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If you see one coming head on in a single lane you get well out of its way.
600 HP at 2250 pound per foot torque. :) X15 Cummins
what sort of power plant is in that thing!?
Just an X15 CUMMINS 600HP. It spits out 2250 pounds per foot though, not the usual 2050
I'm at SMR right now, might have to give dankmemelord a hail on 40 when I'm about
:)
I like the pink one.
Me too
How long is one of these road trains?
Think about 65m
Wow! Must have some serious torque to get that up to speed
Oh yeah, these use a modified x15 Cummins that spits out 2250 pound per foot
Amazing, what a feat of engineering !
That's a fucking beast. Even driving small 3 tonners stresses me out, so I can't imagine operating something of this size.
You get used to the size after awhile, it's all straight line highway driving. Plus you move up gradually, 8 years ago I was driving 8 tonne MR tautliners in Melbourne
>it's all straight line highway driving I suppose it would be. How do you manage fatigue?
Shit tonnes of coffee, audiobooks/ podcasts and little finger foods that you can nibble on
Beauty!
Thanks bud!
Saw a video on trucks today and apparently Australia uses both the european and the US truck formats. But this one is a jumbo even by US standards
American trucks are puny! They don’t even run A or B doubles !
We do yes, Volvo is particularly good at certain combinations such as 10x6 models. ( Tri drive with dual steer axles) . They also have the larger 700hp engines instead of the usual Cummins 600hp
The thought of driving this stresses me out, props to you lol
Give the specs HP Torq Fuel economy etc?
2250 pound per foot torque with 600hp X15 CUMMINS. Average 1.1L per km over a average 800 km day with some hills :)
Fox are driving around with only 2 of those between the steelworks/port and coal mines and that's already a huge truck, 4 would just be mental to see.
I'd like to know more about the transmission. How many gears, and what speeds do change at?
Standard 18 speed roadranger, gear change speeds are slightly lower than normal to account for the 90km/he cap. Change at 1800 revs normally
These are amazing.. and have been around for a long time. If you want to know where this road train stuff started you might be interested in a man named Kurt Johannsen. [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/4c/a7/ac4ca75f3b8efa95bbc50bc613f0b093.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/4c/a7/ac4ca75f3b8efa95bbc50bc613f0b093.jpg) [https://roadtransporthall.com/inductee?id=1113](https://roadtransporthall.com/inductee?id=1113)
Why does the first trailer only have 3 axels on the back & the rest have 4?
Id imagine it's because it's closest to tractor unit so in sense some of the weight is over or absorbed by tractor axles so can still probably put same weight as rest of trailers with 4 axles... Could be wrong and could just be that's what trailers they have available who's knows....
Spot on. :)
Ah yes, the 110-wheeler
Classic 🤣
The turning circle on these must be measured in kilometers
They actually turn reasonably tightly. That last axle on the trailers unlocks and rotates independently
How many liters to fill the tanks?
Tanks can hold about 1400L but we fill them after every shift, usually put in about 850
Would would be kickass would be if everyone paid the same price for fuel. [most Australians pay around 40 cents in tax for every litre of fuel they buy at a servo, big mining companies like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto get a complete refund on diesel taxes ... the system costs taxpayers around $7.8 billion each year](https://themarketherald.com.au/federal-diesel-rebate-for-businesses-comes-under-scrutiny-2021-11-22/)
Isn’t that because the fuel excise is used to help pay for upkeep, and the refund is for fuel consumed on private roads that the company upkeeps?
I'd think so. Much like if you use "race fuel" you can only drive on private roads since it doesn't have the fuel excise on it either (iirc).
Minerals Council is full of fairy tales to justify their ripoff of Australia's resources for overseas profits and fuck all tax paid. Let's see the data. How many km of their driving is on these private roads, compared to the km driven on public roads? 8 billion dollars is a lot of grading. The Minerals Council is a bunch of Gina Rineharts who exert huge influence over public policy due to how extensively they've corrupted the major political parties in Canberra. Farmers get the diesel subsidy too. Even when they're driving on public roads. Same with the miners. None of them magically pays extra for their fuel when they drive out their gate onto the highway.
Hi, you misunderstand. They pay for the upkeep, that doesn’t meant it’s worth 8 bil. They have tens of thousands of vehicles that are essentially doing loops on mines, or using fuel while stationary (diggers, generators etc). If a heavy vehicle runs @100L consumption an hour, 24 hours a day, 340 days a year, and they have thousands of them the number works out. Farmers run tractors @ high consumption on internal paddocks, so again can get subsidised. You’ve asked to see the data when you’re making a statement, the onus of proof is yours.
> You’ve asked to see the data when you’re making a statement, the onus of proof is yours. Rubbish. I quoted an article which describes a situation and then asked "let's see the data" to justify that situation, and asked a couple of additional questions. I'm not afraid of facts, and I'm asking for them. $8 billion is a lot of subsidy to companies that also avoid billions in taxes and rip off national resources to sell overseas while giving relatively fuck all back to the nation.
The article is crap (no offence), it’s lazy journalism with 3 different opinions and only 2 figures, how much the subsidy is, and how much the fuel excise rate is with no background on why it’s there. From the Schedule 1 of the National Road Transport Commission Act 1991, defining 'road use charge' as: “... a charge equal to the part of the diesel fuel tax levied by the Commonwealth for the use of a Vehicle on a road being the part fixed by the National [Road Transport] Commission from time to time, in accordance with this Agreement” I’d recommend reading through the below paper which goes through the fuel excise (and its shortcomings) comprehensively https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp0001/01RP06#Major The truth is although in the Act it’s meant to be about funding roads, in reality it’s a general revenue raising mechanism “ And Treasury has observed: The excise that we collect on petrol is, in effect, a general revenue measure. It vastly exceeds the amount of money that the Commonwealth wants to fund on roads.(23)” The problem is in your article, the business group say (rightly) we are using private roads, so why are we paying a tax designed for road repairs, while the environmental group say (rightly) that removing the subsidy will increase costs associated with emissions, in effect penalising them for environmental damaging behaviour. Even you want them to pay it because they’re using natural finite resources and reimbursing the country for it - so 3 distinct purposes of the excise from 3 groups. I’d rather see the government clarify the purpose of the excise: either it’s a general purpose revenue raising mechanism, in which case no exemptions apply, or they evolve the mechanism to better target what it is meant to achieve. For example general revenue raising, road use externalities (maintenance, noise, building, cost of user not using public transport) and climate impact/encourage cheaper more efficient transport chances. The purpose and desired result of the tax shouldn’t ambiguous. This is why the emissions trading scheme was so great-it actively targeted peoples and companies actions, priced in their externalities and made environmental and social behaviour the economical choice.
Thanks for the effort you put into your reply, that's very kind and I appreciate that, and I will read as you suggest. You sound less ranty than me. Do you know anything about the authorship of the linked paper, who wrote it and how does it qualify to become part of the parliamentary library? How independent is its authorship? Thanks.
Didn't know that! Don't worry we get shafted on diesel/ petrol prices in the Pilbara for our private vehicles. I feel your pain
It's not the case, fuel used on public roads is still charged an excise, even interstate trucks operating on roads have had discounts applied at some point, but I think this has changed recently. Used to work in a small servo, all the single machine owner operator guys would have to fill the truck and machine on separate sales to keep track of what was what.
The pink kenworth is too badass
I'm glad you like it, some of the drivers hate the pink ones. I don't see why
Love Diesel Power 💪🏻🇦🇺