Crusin’ the Corrugations!
In the wet season the track is impassable. In the dry season it’s a long dusty corrugated track, 800 odd kilometres or so. Yet this is where one Kenworth T6 travels each week delivering much needed supplies to remote centres inhabitants.

Kenworth T650 on route to Weipa
It is a little before 4am in Mareeba one Saturday morning late in October, although it could have been any Saturday morning. The main street is quiet and desolate, apart that is, from a young couple staggering away from a pub along the right hand footpath and a dog’s solitary bark off in the distance.
Out on the northern outskirts of town at Bowyer’s Transport yard a yellowish brownish glow from the dust stained headlights of an old Holden ute, that’d seen more than its fair share of dusty trails and pot holes, lit the Kenworth T6 connected to a 45 foot fridge van parked off to the right of the yard. Dust gingerly stirred as the eight foot high chain wire gates with their bent bottom rails were dragged open through the red gravel.
This was the start of Jim Miles, weekly supply run to cattle stations, roadhouses and the remote mining centre of Weipa in the top of the Australia’s gulf country. It is a vital run that everybody relies on.
Jim was born and bred in the nearby coastal town of Cooktown and in two and half decades of trucking has been up and down just about every track in the Gulf that you’d expect a truck to go, and few you wouldn’t at least once. Jim, like most folks in the Gulf Country is of an easy going good humored pleasant nature. Even so, he has little time of idle chatter and doesn’t mince his words.

Kenworth T650 heading into dry river crossing
The night before Jim had taken his two dog trailers, (they’re the two back trailers in the roadtrain combination), out to a parking bay at Mt Molloy 43 kilometers further north. This morning there was little to do except to top up the fridge van’s fuel tank and head north. Luckily, the fuel depot is only around the corner and on the way out, and in no time at all Jim had topped up the fridge van’s fuel tank and added a few litres to the Kenworth T650’s tanks as well.
Jim turned the key, flicked down the headlight switch, pushed in the park brake button and eased out the clutch, he and his Kenworth T6 were heading northward, about as far north as you can drive a truck in Australia.
The road is bitumen as far north as Lakeland a 186 kilometers away after that it is all dirt. The track has some of the roughest most corrugated stretches of dirt in the country and it is cruel on both man and machine. Even so, in recent times Queensland Main Roads have been adding small sections of bitumen, which provide small and welcomed relief from the bone jarring dirt.
Fifty or so minutes later Jim eased off the throttle, the Jake Brake resonated from a nearby batter as Jim eased the Kenworth T6 down through the gears and into the parking bay with the two dog trailers. He switched on the mirror mounted loading lamps and reversed the fridge van and dolly back onto the waiting trailer.
Jim stopped a little short of the dog trailer, climbed from the cabin before grabbing a grease cartridge and torch from the bunk’s locker. He then liberally coated the trailer’s skid plate and dolly’s turntable with the contents of the grease cartridge. To give you an idea of how rough and dusty this track is I took a photo of that same dolly in Weipa the next afternoon and you’d swear that the turntable hadn’t seen a drop of grease in years. Did we mention it was rough and dusty.
There where a couple of load binders to tighten, on the middle trailer and the customary wander around the trailers tapping tyres and thankfully they were all still up.
Now the big Cummins under the hood growled in earnest as the three trailers began to roll out onto the black top and there was time for a chat as the road wound its way up and over the range.
Jim reckons he’s lost count of how long he’s been driving for owner Darcy Bowyer. “Well,” Jim says, pausing to wipe his brow. “I’ve been and worked for a few other outfits over the years, but somehow Darcy always gets me to come back.”
You see when the wet season arrives the road north is closed to all traffic and this could be anywhere from late November to the following March or April. This year it was unusually wet and the road did not re-open till mid June. During the wet Jim like many of the other workers in the north find work further south where ever they can.
When it comes to understanding the challenge of finding skilled drivers, then you need only to ask Darcy how hard that is. Especially, that is, when you are sending roadtrains up into the top of the Gulf country where drivers require more than just a steady hand at the wheel. That’s why when Darcy and Jim negotiated his (Jim’s) new driving contract and Jim requested his new truck be a Kenworth T6 with some specific heavy duty specifications Darcy was more than willing to oblige just keep Jim’s experienced services in his company.
Cummins engines have long been the preferred choice to power the Bowyer fleet. “They’re set at full noise too,” Jim smiled.
That means they’re set at the top 620 horsepower setting, and in the livestock business that is vitally important. “These trailers are like huge kites,” Jim explained. “They just suck the air in and it is like dragging a big parachute even when they are empty. That’s why we have the big horsepower. We’ve been getting a good run out of the Cummins engines too.
To get an idea of just how good that engine has performed over the years consider that engine manufacturers measure engine life by their fuel burn. Therefore to cover the million kilometres these triple roadtrains do the fuel burn is almost double that of highway counterpart.
Transmission is as you’d expect an Eaton 18-speed. While the final drive is Meritor RT50-160GP, with a 4.46:1 ratio, set on a Heavy Duty Neway air suspension.
“The air-suspension gives us a great ride,” Jim informs. “But you really have to watch it traction wise or you’ll be left sitting spinning half way up a jump up. That’s where the DCDL (driver controlled diff locks) come in handy in the rear axles; once they’re locked up the T6 is like a mountain goat even with these three trailers.
Back at his Mareeba depot, owner Darcy Bowyer leaned back in his office chair and admitted that good blokes like Jim are hard to find. “These blokes have years and years of experience driving through some pretty inhospitable country, and the important thing is they get there and back in one piece.”
“Our operation is purely serviced based,” Darcy explained. “All along the track, the roadhouses, cattle stations and communities rely on Jim arriving with their weekly supplies. There are two major contributing factors to providing this essential service reliably, which is Jim’s skills and the durability of the Kenworth T6 truck. You’d need to go a mighty long way to find a tougher truck than these Kenworth T650s, they’re just so well put together.”
“We’ve had a number of different brands of trucks over the years and there a few things that make these Kenworth T650s stand out from the crowd. Firstly you can sleep at night because you know that they’ll get there and back in one piece. Secondly even though they might cost a little more when you purchase them than some of the cheaper imitations at the end of the day they are by far cheaper to operate.
Jim recalls that when he started running to Weipa many years ago, the trucks were only body trucks, Leylands in fact.
“After a while a few operators started towing small dog trailers,” Jim mused. “The old track was far too narrow and twisty for semi-trailers.”
“Back then on some of the bigger jump ups, (hills) like ‘Mt Herman’ and ‘The Brothers’,” Jim reminisces. “We’d unhook the trailer and drive the body truck over the jump up, unload the freight by hand then come back and load all the freight from the trailer onto the body truck. Then we’d tow the empty dog trailer over the jump up before reloading both the body truck and trailer and continuing on.”
“It’s only been in the last decade or so that the road has improved enough to bring these larger roadtrains through,” Jim continued. “If you’ve ever seen some of the articles or the film on Toots Holzheimer you’d know how rough and challenging the run up here was back in the early days.”
“Rough!” Darcy explained. “I don’t think you really understand or appreciate the meaning of the word until you have done a trip or two up here. But that is how it has been for years and there are not too many trucks around that can handle conditions like these, day in day out other than a Kenworth T650. What makes Kenworth trucks stand out in the crowd is the service they provide, not just from an after-sales point of view, but the serviceability of the truck itself. That to us is vitally important, we are in the service industry and at the end of the day we are only as good as the equipment we use, and that is why Jim and I like the Kenworth product so we can provide the best service to our customers.”
On the northern side of Lakeland the purring of the Cat under the hood was smothered as the tyres hit the dirt track. Dust literally bellowed from the trailers and that’s how it was to be for the next 700 hundred odd bone chattering kilometers. But thankfully Jim had some deliveries along the way and the first stop was tiny community of Laura, where a well deserved feed of bacon and eggs washed down with a strong coffee was more than welcomed.
Another an hour or so up the track, and Jim slowed up again, this time it was the Hann River roadhouse’s turn and it was to be like this the rest of the way to Weipa. At each stop Jim was greeted with a friendly welcome and a hodge-podge of forklifts-come-tractors trundled out to his roadtrain to collect their order, a pallet or two from the back trailer then up to the front for some frozen goods. All the while there was friendly chatter about the weather, the road and how a mate was going up the track.
By late afternoon Jim had made it to Coen, and probably the largest of the towns up the track. He stopped near a cattle grid on the outskirts of town and went around tapping each wheel with a bar to remove the dust. Coen is a quiet place, a three dog town, which lay unassuming and peaceful in the middle of the road enjoying the late afternoon sun oblivious to Jim bustling about on a rickety forklift unloading the freight.
Jim would camp up for the night a few kilometers south of the Archer River Roadhouse so his fridge motor would not disturb the campers in the roadhouse’s campsite and unload in the morning. It would be the middle of the day when he’d pull in the Weipa depot and begin to unload. By six thirty, with the help from the local yard staff the two dog trailers were loaded ready for their southbound journey, Jim would reload the fridge van with 22 tonne of fresh fish for the Cairns market in the morning.