Kenworth T6: Operator Review

Name: Kenworth T6: Operator Review
Brand: Kenworth

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 inhabitants

It is a little before 4.00am in Mareeba one particular Saturday morning, but 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 an amber 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 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’s weekly supply run to cattle stations, roadhouses and the remote mining centre of Weipa in the top of the Australia’s gulf country. It’s 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 humoured pleasant nature. Even so, he has little time for idle chatter and doesn’t mince his words.

The night before, Jim had taken his two dog trailers, (they’re the two back trailers in the road-train combination), out to a parking bay at Mt Molloy 43 kilometres 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 tank and added a few litres to the Kenworth T650’s tanks as well.

Far North

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 186 kilometres 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 welcome relief from the bone-jarring dirt.

Fifty or so minutes later, 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.

There were a couple of load binders to tighten on the middle trailer and the customary wander around the trailers tapping tyres which were thankfully 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, I’ve been and worked for a few other outfits over the years, but somehow Darcy always gets me to come back,” he says.

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 road trains 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 Jim’s new driving contract and he requested his new truck be a Kenworth T6 with some specific heavy-duty specifications, Darcy was willing to oblige just keep Jim’s experienced services in his company.

Heavy duty

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 550 horsepower, and in this business that’s important. “These containers are like huge kites,” Jim explained. “They just suck the air in and it is like dragging a big parachute even when they’re empty. That’s why we have the big horsepower. We’ve been getting a good run out of the Cummins engines too.

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 truck. You’d need to go a mighty long way to find a tougher truck than these Kenworth T6’s, 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 Kenworths 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, at the end of the day they are 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, 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 road trains 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.”

On the dirt

On the northern side of Lakeland the hummin’ of the Cummins 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 seven-hundred-odd bone-chattering kilometres. 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 welcome.

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, all of 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 kilometres 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.

Truck Specs

Model: Kenworth T6

Engine: Cummins ISX

Horsepower: 550hp (410kW) at 1850rpm

Torque: 2050lb/ft (2780Nm) at 1100rpm

Gearbox: Eaton RTLO22915B 18-Speed

Chassis: Full-length double frame with sealant between rails

Air Cleaner: Dual Cyclopacs with raised air rams

Fuel Filter: Fuel Pro and fuel/water separator

Electrical: 160A isolated alternator and power distribution box

Front Axle: Meritor MFS73LA 7.3t capacity

Front Suspension: Multi leaf