Haulin' the Hume 2019
The cold and inclement conditions at this year's Haulin' the Hume run did little to dampen the spirits of the many historic truck enthusiasts who took part...The biennial Haulin' the Hume Road Run was held over the weekend of March 30-31, between Camden and Yass in NSW, using as much of the original Hume Highway as possible.
Once again the Western Sydney Historical Truck Club organised an event that attracted more than 300 commercial vehicle entries that ranged from utes to prime movers.
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Healthy turnout
The level of interest in this nostalgic event can be judged by the numbers of spectators along the route, despite 30-knot wind blasts and icy rain that dropped temperatures to single figures throughout the Saturday.
Most of the roadside watchers were grey-haired and many nodded in approval as the distinctive notes of two-stroke 'Jimmys' cut across the paddocks.
Ah yes, memories flooded back: a snub-nosed SAR KW with a Silver 92 Detroit Diesel under-bonnet, stirred by a 13-speed RoadRanger and pulling an early tri-axle trailer. And stir you had to, back when peak torque was less than you get in some utes these days.
White-knuckle ride
It's always interesting to get into one of these pre-1989 units, after a diet of high-torque, automated-shift, modern prime movers. On the flat there was nothing in it, but in the hills the 'oldies' needed plenty of down-shifting and even then, road speed decayed rapidly. Meanwhile, the cocooned drivers of B-Doubles ghosted by, oblivious to the grade, with more than twice the payload on board.
It was the same running off the hills. Very early linehaulers on the Hume were often 4x2 rigid trucks with five-speed 'boxes, hot-rodded for prime-mover duties by the fitment of two-speed drive axles, or the addition of auxiliary 'joey' boxes.
Brakes were standard offerings, of course, so steep downgrades became white-knuckle affairs for drivers, who alternated slowing duties between bottom-cog engine braking (minimal), the trailer handpiece (not much better) and the foot brake (usually dodgy).
Tough road
When Jake brakes and multi-speed RoadRangers arrived in the 1980s they were greeted as 'loooxuries'!
The Haulin' the Hume 2019 track led from south-western Sydney to Yass, covering some of the most demanding sections of the Old Hume: Razorback, with its now 40th anniversary Truck Blockade memorial; the Hole in the Wall railway underpass in Picton, with its trailer-scarred brickwork; the sphincter-clenching single-lane bridge at Bargo; sharp up and down grades at Bendooley Hill and Berrima; Logbook Hill, where drivers doctored their hours before confronting the Mermaids at the Marulan weighbridge and the climbs and bends of the Cullerin Range.
Enthusiasm by the tonne
Most of the participants in Haulin' the Hume were mature truckies who had memories of road transport in the last decades of the 20th century.
A typical truck devotee was Neville Storey (below), who turned up at the 2019 event, despite some adversity in the lead-up. He'd coupled up one of his beautifully restored prime movers to a flat-top trailer, only to discover during a pre-trip check that it had suddenly acquired water in its engine oil.
He replaced it with a work-in-progress Kenworth cab-over and made it to the start at Camden.
We caught up with Neville at the Goulburn lunch stop where he was reacquainting himself with an SAR he'd done up years ago. Painted in the Storey family transport company's livery, this Silver-92-powered truck was mated to a trailer with matching livery by its new owners.
Old truckies never die; they just downshift a little more…
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