Goodaye all. A divergent week after a normal type start, loading Monday and delivering in Melbourne Tuesday, then load Bulk DG for a turf farm in Windsor out the end of Sydney. Get to the end of the road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and a No Through Road on the left, no name for the business I am looking for, but being very early in the morning after a long drive, I imagined then I should go right. Bad move. Travel along to find the street numbers dwindling when I had hoped they would go higher and the road getting narrower and no cross roads visible, so found a wide driveway into another farm and did a three point turn just managing to miss the one telegraph pole, right at the opposite side, the gutter on one side and the deep drain on the other.
Back up to the junction to find no name, but a street number in the dark just past the No Through Road sign. MMMMM, can’t stop on the road, so in to the NO Thru with trepidation and to bed. Not even asleep and a toot toot, up and look out, you can’t park there, drive down to the farm. Yeh right, off after him and a bloke would not drive down there in a car not knowing what was ahead and I am in something somewhat bigger. I hit the powerlines with the aerials on the truck trying to get around the corner, hit the trees getting down the road and then parked up and went to bed.
Unloaded later that morning and then some phone problems after that, me and the bill issues, then into Sydney and load for Adelaide. Barely get in the gate off the road to load even from the wrong side of the road and then a que of trucks pulls up behind and glares at me as I load my b-double with a full load. Don’t rush I’m told, they will just have to wait, but they can’t get round me or back out now, so they glare as I try to hurry safely. I would not have been happy waiting an hour. Two forks on me now (and found later one had hit the back of the plastic guard and bent the mudflap bracket after I had just fixed the other side last week from another forkie) and off to Adelaide.
Another road to continue my listing of truck rest areas, informal truck bays etc, so a good thing that way as well. After some big sections with either lots of stupidly sized and painted, yet ridiculously too small painted shoulder bays, or good rest areas with gaps or nothing at all for miles and after finding a spot south of Mildura to sleep in, I then ran on into Adelaide. Unloading all good and getting fuel with an issue with the new truck GPS system that hopefully won’t come back and bite me, but the fellows with the crane and witches hats I had to get around, seemed impressed I missed them, with much thumbs up going on.
Coming up out of Adelaide I was musing on the roughness of the road on the Sturt Highway northbound went over a crest and whoa, it felt like 4 hits together, what a ride, probably with the wheels off the ground and the skidmarks which followed this engineering marvel, attest to the fact someone else had a serious issue with it too. I did have some other things on my mind like managing my hours to get home in time for trailer machinery inspections, so it was the next day before I rang to lodge a complaint. I did speak with another driver during the night who said, yes I know that bit and use the other lane. I asked had he complained and suggested he did, as he is on that road every week.
When I rang I mentioned the fact I thought it was the biggest impact in the last 5 years and I was concerned. To the credit of the gentleman I spoke with, he rang back asking had I seen the rough surface signs and I did not recall them, but that the way I described it, they could not just patch it and he had ramped it up to a major repair. I had offered my name and number initially and he asked could he pass that on if needed and I agreed and will hope to save some other poor bugger from such an impact. I was driving and so could not take details from him, but he texted me an incident number and I will follow up in two weeks. Any of you who know the road and issue I speak of, I would welcome any comments and support of the repair please.
Got home, machineries done, a few minor repairs as I went straight there and then the accelerator died again as per last week. In the scheme of things, at least I was in Dubbo and had the inspections done and was loaded. Still got it back to the yard and had it fixed for now with some more work to follow hopefully next week.
Whilst loading the young lady spoke of her plans for the long weekend. Ah yes, that would be nice, but with the holiday only in NSW, I get to go to work Sunday like normal to be able to do a timeslot in Melbourne early Monday after unloading the back trailer, so yes, a long week end would have been nice. Safe Travelling, Rod Hannifey.
TRUCKRIGHT 