Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to wherever you are. You're listening to the AllTalk Truck Podcast today. We've got Andrew Smolas with us from Andrew's Refrigerated Transport. G'day Andrew.
Hello. You might recognise that voice. Andrew was with us on the Sema Podcast all those months ago in early November. So you recognise the voice Andrew's been on before, but he was co-hosting that day.
Was Andrew the one pushing you along in your club that we might get? Yes, if you remember the story with the scooters, the battery ran out. Andrew was pushing me from behind on the footpath. We got some strange looks and threw the casino.
And they thought that's the best synchronised driving we've ever seen. They were making comments. Yeah, and someone went up to the guest host, the counter had said, can we get those standard scooters? So we created a market for them.
Welcome to the podcast, Andrew. Again, today it's all flavours and all trucks. Andrew runs a logistics refrigerator, logistics type company. And he trucks you on your fleet mate.
And they're 15 in all up, 10 in Sydney and 5 in Melbourne. Big and small, all different shapes and sizes. Small from one pallet up to 22 pallet pallet primitives and drivers. And they're like the big boys on their own.
You're standing. Yes, and you drive a lot. I do. I always get a bit confused as age creeps into remember where the switches are for the exhaust brakes and cruise controls and trailer brakes.
They're not the same brand. So it's always a bit funny. Well, that's the thing. I mean, you get into a car, you get a rental car, you get your mates car, your wife's car, your husband's car.
And you're steering with your seat and everything. So all the acceptable little things. The trucks must have seen the cabin. That's a work.
You're agreeing to go remember the indicators are on the left. Yep. So you often get sort of caught out with that. No, but they are different seating positions is often different.
The seats themselves can really gorgeous and brief. Some of you are suspended, which different drivers put them on different seating. So you can be bouncing around unless you're turning it up to where you want it to be. The smaller vehicles don't have those luxuries.
So you tend to be looking for all those switches and... That doesn't exist. So you can spend a bit of time at about 10 minutes and you should when you get into a truck. That's sort of a reminder sort of on where everything is.
Well, that's your 15 trucks. You got to have 15 drivers. I do. And not all of them drive the same truck.
I'm assuming. So one day you may be copying to John's truck who had a different setting. You're right. So you're forever playing.
You're right. Another big sort of difference is the steering wheel. The larger trucks have a lot of adjustments that you can make on the wheel. And of course, when you've got all your toggles and things for the phone and sound and what have you, it's important that you're in a proper driving position with cleave you and able to sort of feel comfortable in what you're doing.
Yeah, so it takes a lot of good to take it organized. Do you want me to first start a little truck? I was petrified. Yeah, they're huge and having driven normal cars for the years that we have, it's only when you're getting into a truck that you come to appreciate what difficulties truck drivers have when normal passenger vehicles and drivers driving those have no idea of how big heavy, slow to respond trucks are compared to vehicles.
And it gives you a greater appreciation when you get back into a car, they give trucks plenty of space and plenty of time. Yeah, I was like that. I don't know about glasses. I still got the license.
I don't know about any more. But even my wife coming at the time, no kids, we were just leaving their suburbs and right around and it was quick and easy park wherever you wanted. And when she was on the bike, she realized that all bike riders were maniacs. And she was more aware of where the bike was on the road.
And I guess it's the same way you're saying. You're in a truck. When you get back in a car, you tend to appreciate the efforts that are needed. The stopping distances.
Yeah, I mean, I don't drive trucks. And the noise that you've been in, I leave playing a room in front of a truck. It's a truck for the brake. Then you've got guys cutting in front of you to make up that extra.
Well, people that on motorways or even in order as they doodle along the blinds, or the truck. Well, just a truck, it's not enough room. Don't pole game another car and then sit sort of like, you know, spot where the truck's not going to see you be. You know, be aware of, you know, look at him and say, well, there's a bit of traffic there.
And I'm not going to sit in this spot because if this truck has the brake or there's an emergency, he has no way to go, you know, because he's not coming. He's not going to lose. He's not 15 feet long. Yeah, he's not a yarrress that he's going to.
It's exactly right. So you see, you see, many of the motorways, one thing going on, like I said, a lot of trucks on three-lane motorways and you're overtaking lane. Buddy, you're limited to 100. Why are you there?
He hasn't got it. I guess already. Yeah, no, no, no. You'll see that as well.
But I mean, you've got three lanes. Yeah. Right? At best, you should be in the middle.
Yes. There's absolutely no room. He's in a truck still in 99. The other truck still in 99, someone's going to have to get it.
Yeah, you're in the end. What happens is he's waiting for a down hill run, so he can just sort of like nudge it a bit and, okay, everyone else is sitting on 100. You're going to have to sit on 100 or 95. Yeah.
Because then all that's happening is now, you've got like a smaller truck, from the 70s, floating all in the left lane, you've got another truck in the middle lane. You see all the time, especially in the mornings on motorways or P-Caribut, you've got trucks right at basically, one of them going to have one. There's a real simple fix to that. Up in Queensland, between the Gold Coast and Brisbane, if you're in the right lane, the extreme fast lane, you get fined.
Trucking trucks. Yeah, they're trying to bring that in here. No, sure. I see that.
That's right. That's right. That's right. That's four or five lanes.
You can monitor that. On a Sydney camera, Sydney Melbourne, it's just two lanes. You're going to have to overtake eventually. You can't do that on your two lane type freeway.
Yeah, but I don't like trucks trying to overtake uphill. Yeah. It's always a worry when you see someone pull out in the right lane, you're like, hey, I can't do that. And you're trying to drive a train in general, in Australia, because you've got two lanes and you've got this, you know, you've got a person dawdling along doing 95 with the semi behind him.
And then the semi's got to go into the right-hand lane. And then all the time, everyone that was going to do 110 to go up the hill, or 115, whatever, push up the hill a bit, they're all banked up. In five tunnel exits, that's the prime example. That's been designed on trucking's fault.
The other thing, I mean, the other point you raised about cars sitting in certain spots, the truck, there are a lot of blind spots on trucks. A lot of blind spots. And a lot of you've got a different range of mirrors. It's one of the biggest dangers driving a truck that you constantly need to be looking at, who's where, because they can just pop out in an instant, of course, you agree.
Yeah. I find, certainly in the Sydney traffic and Melbourne, it's the same. The prevalence of people trying to overtake in the left lane is getting out of control. Is there a motorway or even just a stairway?
Anyway, there seems to be this sort of legal issue on a main road. It's not legal to overtake down the left. I know. And fundamentally, in a truck, you should be in the middle lane.
So you've got that ability, should something pop up in front of you to give you options to either sort of left or right, and stay away from the kerbside gatters, because often the gatters might not be straight and you're running pretty close to them and you will might sort of nudge one of the gatters and it might throw you, so you're hearing out. So fundamentally, you should always be in the middle lane if there is one. But the number of people trying to overtake you on that inside lane is really, really dangerous, so it's becoming more and more common. These days, you know, I tell my guys, I have one eye in the left mirror constantly to be waiting for that sort of desperately to come past and try to overtake you with park cars and all that in front of you.
And the other thing is, you're going to sort of left you on the hook into the right. You do, and you put your blinker on, you know, two or three meters before you want it turned. They give everyone plenty of those, and they're still trying to duck in front of you. That's crazy.
Is there a technology? Have you got sensors now? I mean, they're not blind spots. Have they, I've trust that sophisticated yet to have sensors?
We, like, you know, you know, passenger can't, you've got your overseas on the red light in the mirror, is the blind spot monitoring? Do they have that in trucks or on trailers or anything? Or is that luxury? No, they are.
I mean, I was just driving a U.D. prime move and now it's got lane departure by buzzing. It's got automatic braking. And in fact, it's got a four stage exhaust brake on that, the lever that took me after a test drive.
He said to me, I'll tell you when to hit the fourth, the top sort of exhaust brake, because you're almost fly through the window. And we found a key stretching road. He said, okay, work your way through the exhaust brake. And it brought the truck to a 20 kilometer an hour really quickly sort of slowed down.
And he said to me, because now when in front of us, it brought it down to 20 kms, it was a car in front of us and it stopped completely. And this was phenomenal. I'm just saying, I mean, we've got Nurgs and Vomas now who have good brake retarders in them. But the exhaust brake on this thing was just down to the exhaust brake.
It uses the exhaust of the truck to slow you down. And I think cars should have this as well. It was a retard. It retards the sort of forward movement of the vehicle.
Is that where the truck's like that loud noise? Yeah. Okay. And I don't know why I can't.
Just start putting the banana in the top one. Yeah. I've said that, maybe. Yeah.
It doesn't work. Yeah. I don't know why they don't bring in the decals, because I think it's a useful tool to have. It can slow you down without rad equals sort of braking.
And certainly with heavy vehicles, let's say going down a steep hill, you'll use your exhaust brake, probably in its highest mode, depending on what load you've got. And then you feather that with your foot brake, the normal brake, and also your gears. So it saves on the vehicle's brakes because you're not applying the more time. It gives you progressive slowdowns as opposed to just hitting the brake with your foot.
And the other thing is, like you said, you can hear it. And often when cars are around you and they hear that, they know that you're decelerating. Okay. So it's sort of like driving a Harley, you know, with the loud exhaust, speaking out here coming along.
Yeah. Yeah. I know we are. I know we are.
Can you mirror us because this guy's coming. Well, that was a- I was trying to slow down. There was some footage from South Australia the other day of a loaded semi-going up emergency ramp. I've never seen it.
If you've been up in a emergency ramp, then you go on. I'll find it and I'll put it on the other way. I've never seen it. This guy had the dash cam going.
They heard the exhaust brake going on. He's just got on fired up the inside lane, on straight up the hill. Because again, towards Wollongong, they got the safe track. Yeah.
Gossford, they got the ram sound. Yeah. It's always worth taking care. It's like what's at the top there.
It's not an air- I don't know. I'm not. It's just been lit. It was like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
Yeah. That was- Yeah. I mean, you can see some of the drivers, they won't stop because they'll like, he's got it. I mean, he might just kick down.
He had a bit of speed. Is that an Australian thing? I've already noticed any of that copies. I think I'll- They do have them overseas.
If they're on- Look, the thing is we've got our terrain here has always been part of the problem with infrastructure. Because we've got a lot of hills and mountains. And instead of cutting through and putting tunnels everywhere like they do in Europe, okay? What do we do?
We make semis go up hill and you know, 100 Ks with a fuel in a kilometer. That's- That's probably one minute to see it. Yeah. You're right.
Europe. There's a lot of tunnels like that. You just put a tunnel that's a kilometer long instead of winding around a 10 kilometer mountain. So- I mean, the best one they do in that one is up in the Baller.
People are heading north. They know that in the old days you'd drive through that Baller area and through a truckie. That's about your 10th hour in your drive. Yeah.
Sitting north. And that's why you had all the rollovers because most of the drivers would be pretty fatigued by then. And they come up to this hill-eaten out in this area where they've opened down hills sharp corners. Coars, yeah.
And they'd roll. Now they've opened two tunnels up there. They've eliminated that. They've eliminated that.
It's really made a hell of a difference. Yeah. And same time and fuel and everything. But you're right.
It's a big country and it just costs a lot of money I think. People don't understand how big it is unless you get out of your drive. Until you get across, I mean for Sydney people especially. And if you're a heavy vehicle driver.
Until you get ready to bath. But there's some of those players attacking. Pretty much. You might be right right up there.
You might be right up there. You're right down the hill. But there's no more mountains and ranges and stuff like that. And they're pretty straight.
Everywhere else if you're going north, south, east. Right. It's all uphill downhill. Like it doesn't matter where it is.
And it's very challenging for heavy vehicle drivers. Even not your truck. Even your normal drivers. You're going uphill down hill around the bend.
If you have a look where a lot of accidents happen. They have an odd blind crest. Okay. You've got.
With the speech changes. Like people who use concentration because they've been sitting there or they're just not paying attention generally or they're on their phone or something. So if you do, I mean you do the Sydney Melbourne route often. Even though it's dual-carriage weight.
Mate, that's curvy, healy. That's still a challenging road being a truck. It is. But it's about 10 times easier than going Sydney Brisbane.
Oh yeah. You can sit on 100k's on cruise control. And the vehicle really won't struggle to drop keys or whatever. And there's two lanes and there's plenty of run-off on either side.
So you've got that flexibility. I mean north is improving with all the major roadworks they're doing. But there are still sections north of Cos Harbour that are pretty static. And it's almost the national disgrace in 2000.
They're getting there. I drove up last year. And they've made really a massive bridge over that river here. They've done some great work.
The Maxwell bypassing river Maxwell. Yeah. Whenever the holidays would come along you'd hear about 10-15km delay is queuing to cross that route. That's right.
Yeah. That's finished. Also one-up one back lane over. That's more interesting.
But the one north of Bathton, taking a totally different route, following the old highway. It's time they come through and they should have came in the area there. And they'll be great with that. And if you have your GPS running on that, it goes crazy because you're always off the sort of path that's been touching beyond.
And you're cutting a lot of time. I remember the missing link will be Cos Harbour. I heard a quote from Neville Rand in the 70s when I'm proposing a dual-carriage weight. He said it was cheaper to move Cos Harbour than it was to build the road around it.
Because apparently the terrain now where the big banana hills are pretty much on the coast. You're either going to have to tunnel your way around it or go through Cos Harbour each time. But it's funny because the bypasses are great and they add a lot of safety. But you've got to be careful to build infrastructure like major service station truck parking areas where you would normally be pulling up to have a rest rate, for example with costs.
So if they bypass costs, there might be a tendency for trucking to say, well I'll just keep going. Because that is Maxwell costs are traditionally the areas where you pull over for your break. But if you're sort of sitting on 100 and you feel all the way down. And then you'll get yourself into trouble further down.
So as long as they build where they bypassing nutrition risk breaks, proper truck parking facilities, then that's fine. But they've got to be careful enough to get that. I'm not fair enough all these bypasses. Because it kills local economies.
You can say it heading south. You've found it. I've only driven a coffee swans, coffee back. And I've driven back from Brisbane back to Sydney once.
Sydney Melbourne and stuff. I've done a heavy job in Sydney. But we can say that we specifically stop there. If you're traveling north or south, no matter where you're traveling.
If you're traveling along many ways and freeways, jump off and have a follow up in a break, 10 in a break and look after the local community. Get yourself a pie or a quick bite to eat, buy a can of drink. Because you don't want 50 people at the age of that. There you go.
But all these bypasses, I'm not a fan. They should be, we're not saving that much time by building bypasses at hundreds of millions of dollars. And what's the food in the survey? What's your go to Andrew?
Oh look, the KFC is probably the go to safe bit. But just on the bypasses. It's an interesting point you bring up. If you think of a professional track driver who's complying with his road rule, he or she, we're forced to have breaks in long journeys.
But I hear so many times families say, oh, we're driving up to the Gold Coast from Sydney. And when you ask them, where are you going to stop along the way? Most will come back with, oh, what do you mean? Or, oh, look, you know, I'm sharing the drive with my wife.
So I'll get out of the car and then she'll sort of jump in and go for it. The reality of it is that normal people driving normal cars aren't used to those long instances of concentrating driving. So sometimes when I'm driving up and down, I can see cars and dry nomads and they start swerving in the lane. You sort of want to be yourself, should breaks be made compulsory for everybody on long journeys.
Because a lot of people think that they can do it, but they just can't. And they don't really do it. I know the Merks have a little coffee cup. I mean, the older Merks would come on after two hours.
That was the general rule, the two hours. I know with the Merks, it does register your driving, not scalar ability, but if you're car monitors that you're swerving because they've all got lane recognition now these cars, that coffee light will come on a lot earlier if the car recognizes that you're driving erratically or not as smoothly. But then you've got to say I'm going to pull over and have that coffee break. But that's the other problem, you know.
Here you can be a very good example. Here we just don't have the facility. So it looks too much to build them and just after the man. I mean, you drive south and you go to Marulan and they're gradually building the Hannah's Pies or whatever it's called.
Heather braid Pies. When you're trouble sau. They're making it more person-friendly because a lot of people don't like the service station food or Mac is. So it's good that they're building other facilities.
Not the old day. And the time of day is one. The trucks are going 24-7. Some places shut down at night.
They do. We've got long distances in Australia. We're in Europe and America. You've got cities every couple of hours.
You can pull over and eat something hardy. We're in Australia. We've got long distance. We've got back to your road trip when we get much ready.
I tend to, when we're leaving to go to a destination, I like to leave before in the morning and get half the trip done. And then I sort of wakes up at 8'9' and then have a breakfast stop and then just cruising to the main town because you can't check into the talk-clock anyway. And then I tend to when we leave the holiday to come home, we'll have a nice lunch and leave in the afternoon, stop halfway for dinner and then the kids will crash at night and get home at night one. Because I always like driving at night.
I like driving at night. I don't know. You tend to see more at night ahead. You do because you've got the headlights.
You can see there's a car coming over the crest. To be honest with you, I try to avoid all my guys driving at night. I feel that the propensity to sort of start to get sleepy, get frustrated and it become dangerous I think grows exponentially at night. And there are certain areas and certain times of the year when the wildlife can cause you a lot of grief at night.
And so unfortunately in the heavy industry we're sometimes forced to make our delivery destinations at 3 or 4am. So the goods can then be put on to smaller trucks and delivered to wherever they need to go in the cities that we're delivering to. And that forces your faculty to do a lot of night time driving, personally I try to move away from that sort of work to work where basically we have found accommodation spots that attract friendly, heading both to Brisbane and Melbourne primarily. And I tell my guys to leave early in the morning and then to pack up at sunset, look close to it, get a good night's sleep and then wake up early in the morning and get out of there and drop off point and touch wood.
I think that's made them feel more comfortable and safe as drivers. Certainly makes me feel safe when I get a bit of night and I get my guys that are sleeping as well in a motel room somewhere. Having said that, particularly the European trucks have fantastic accommodations for the drivers in terms of their car. They've gone a long way to sort of improving the ventilation, the little TV's you can mount videos, music, the lighting, you can have mood lighting in them.
Because that's cabbage up up the edge. They are. So the old days if you went to sleep and you'd be sweating that engine but it doesn't just switch off. It doesn't cool down straight away here.
So your sake of ventilation is like an air con system that doesn't run off. Yeah. All those, I'm meant to get out of all the additional sort of air con for the big prime movers which run off a trickle sort of battery power and provide that additional comfort. But the mattress is, I mean all the creature comforts have become safe wood now.
Yeah. That certainly the European trucks compared to the Japanese at a night and day in relation to long distance driver safety and driver comfort. That's what the country is doing in Japan. It's not the big country that the need for overnight trucks be limited.
Yes. You're covering large distances. So what's the cargo do you call, you'll have to say? Inside disclosure statements?
Yeah. We have high-level customers. Anything from minus 25 to plus 25. We've geared up all the fleet to be able to have temperature zones within that range.
So it could be frozen medicine. Do you have to know what's in your cargo? Or it could be illegal. What's the say?
Do you know, like if I give you a box and you're a hydro truck to deliver this box to Melbourne, geez, better you're paying me a lot of money. Do you ask, well, either a decorator or a form, is there a log sheet? Like, has it worked? Last I told you I introduced new laws called the chain of responsibility.
What that does is it places on every person in the chain from the person who makes the goods to the person that receives them to be responsible for their handling and their care. We don't inspect what we're given, but we're given a comprehensive list. We require the person we're picking up from. So it's their responsibility that's what we're transporting.
Our responsibility is to get it from A to B. We don't need to inspect the freight to see what it should be, because now this law places are known as everyone to be about what's happening. And that takes a lot of load off our shareholders in that respect. Because we don't need to be conscious.
It's also becoming quite common now, certainly with sensitive freight that they put seals on the doors, which have numbers and they really let the number under the receiving party. So when you get there, the receiving party will check the seal number against what they've been told and it's okay to do. That's like the whole five-dollar-eight-and-half. But you need to know that you're going to need to see what your energy is refrigerated.
There's certain temperatures and if I don't tell you what you can do to the goods and transit. And also when we're shifting hazardous goods as well, we need to sort of be what hazardous goods are going to be. And what sort of safety equipment you need to have in the truck for those hazards. Because different hazards, different hazards, good safety.
So with the chain of command, it's interesting. Last Monday, right, it's called roadside to pick my car up. They picked it up, saw it go on, no dramas. I got calls from the dealership a couple of hours later that the towies scraped my front bar, pulled it off the tow truck.
I went down there, checked it out, yeah, a couple of big scrapes underneath. I called roadside, but mine, I've got no contract with the towie. I bought roadside. You organized it.
They've pumped it off to the towie coming. Sorry. They say, well, they'll be in touch with you. What do I have to do with them for?
I pay you. Yeah. You pay them. They took it somewhere else.
Now, then, tomorrow's a week. So tomorrow will be a week since it happened. So they said three to four days, someone will be in touch with you. It's still very fine.
Look, you're not a contract driver. Sometimes you'll be interested in the change of the training committee. People have to want to do the right thing within that framework. That's correct.
You know, so you can have the little there, but if someone's trying to dodge their responsibility, that sounds like they might be out here. It makes it hard. Yeah. All I want to know is who's here.
That's all driver said. He did it all because it's quite possible that he dropped it off it was fine. And one of the both great, Chris Montees has jumped him on a car and bombed it out. He could have it and then they're going to say, playing the towie.
Right? It's three massive water human. So all I want to keep back is I didn't do it. Now, if I was going to get that reply back, I should have got it back on Tuesday because that would have called the towie and sent me.
Did you drop this guy's front bar off the tow track and he would have said, back now it wasn't me. Right? So when it goes for four days and you don't get a denial and saying the thing, well, you drop my front bar. They're hoping that you'll go away.
But you're not going to have to. No, that's not going to happen. I actually said to the guy right side, I said to him, I'm not the average holder now. And my IQ's over 50.
And I also don't know what it costs. You know, one of my guys. Right, right. Well, one of my guys.
Supply and fit is for a grand for a new front split up because it's a complete one piece assembly with a grille and everything. One of my guys had these drivers side mirror, a broken one and a prime mover. And Sky Road was a company that who's driving back into it and smashed it. So we contacted them and we said, listen, you know, your guy has invented two of these details by the way.
And they said, oh mate, what's the big deal? You know, like we get our mirrors broken, we break mirrors. Just wear it. I said, that'd be fine, you know, but Mercedes Benz have quoted me just under a thousand of the supply and fit.
And more importantly, we've got to do a little bit of the car drive without it. And so it's like a doofy. So the cost of these parts, actually, you just hope everyone is right. Oh, no.
I wanted to ask you about the licensing and you get a truck license. Is it just a reverse park and a computer test? There's a place that little before where you go. They've drive around the block a couple of times with some corporate.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got a bus and I'm going to do it just to drive the bus. I was going to do the bus course. I reckon we should do we should do the courses.
Right. Just so we can report back, I want to drive the bus because I've seen the bus because the the bus takes is the route that I did the kids swam drop off. Right. So I see them there all the time and I see these guys trying to get go, we get the bus stop.
Right. So I want to do you want to do the bus? You do the truck. I'm going to try.
Ross is not here. We're going to have a day. Ross is here. I'm getting my ex-conveyed.
I'm going to give him as one of those skitties. Really confused with four handles. Oh, I'm going to have to make sure we'll move the left and the right skickers. Swabble over.
But like I mean, is it ours? Is it you put your arrows in the back of the truck and your dad gets next to you? How does it work? You got to go to the this two parts to there's the computer test which you need to do and pass before you go and you do get driving part of it.
But Pete, I think you're right. I think it's too easy. I think it needs to be sort of made a lot tougher to pass and get your license because it's so many clowns out there driving around that you think these guys couldn't drive their life depending on what. But the problem is other people's lives depend on them.
I do an esthetic agent. I have a friend of mine who was coming off the M7 at the press that's up and they were right where Scott was right here. Right. So he was coming from the north.
So he was in the left-hand lane. There was a B double in the right-hand lane. Now the B double should have placed himself in the middle of both if he wants to go left. Or right really at that.
As the car started moving forward my mate was way back but he was still in line with the B double. As the car started to move, this guy was putting his indicator on to go left. So he didn't move. He let all the cars go and then he waited.
He's just gone and done a shot turn and got from the car and ran. The cops turned out didn't do anything. A month later they said I made an infringement for not giving way to a turning vehicle. I'm standing still.
Yeah but usually we should have stopped the world before. When he was in the right-hand lane, he had all these routes. He was an import driver. But insurance did go on his car off.
He didn't shut the car off. That's what happened was. Even though the damage was very minor. It was either you go front guard and scrape on the bumper in the mirror.
But when it got repaired the car developed a static noise. This is the Volkswagen. Yes. The static noise.
You know you get your steady three radio. You get your 70s cars. If you went over a bus, it's steady. I think the insurance company leaned on the dealership to say this is normal with the cops.
The parameter. That's what the parameters. You've got a big of them in the yard. Let's take them for a drive and see how many of them do this like this.
So in eventually it went to the embuffment. Your husband said, right, it's not going to walk because they had their own people who got it. They said, beak set or give them a new car or pay now. But whatever got hit, something obviously has his touching somewhere.
So an innocuous little accident cost him. But insurance company like the Blanks Square the only other tracking company. Yeah. They didn't dump that.
There's a great link. I don't know if you can get them. It's called FoxLink. The high patrol have it.
And we get emails from them two or three times a week. And it shows what the high patrol have pulled up. Trucks, effective trucks. Trucks overloaded.
Trucks not carrying weight properly secured. Accidents. And you just look at these photos. I think they're included as part of those.
Yeah. It's like a deterrify you guys. You pull your hair out. You know when you see how some vehicles are loaded or how some vehicles have absolute ball ties and they get pulled up randomly.
And you sort of think right there out there on the road, you know, with the general public. And I was going to talk to you about the trucks ahead. There's way at the bat. But the way the weight is that the cargo has loaded makes a huge difference as well.
Absolutely. That's part of your knowledge and driving test. When you sit for a knowledge test, your ask questions about how would you stack certain loads and where you'd put the loads and how you're secure them. Two components.
Weather stack and Manhattan secure them properly. And again, when you're doing a proper course, not by some degree sort of operator, you are forced to secure loads. Usually they might be concrete slabs or whatever using chains, using ropes. So it's not just driving an enclosed pen tank.
It's a truck that you're going to license for, but you're forced to secure a load using all sorts of the usual things that you see load strapped down by. And unless you pass those, you know, ultimately it gets you a vehicle. So despite the fact that you might only be driving a rigid body vehicle, if you're flying a vehicle, you need to get a load. So when you turn up to a cargo load, who's the boss?
The driver or the guy with the forklift? The driver. That's where our chain responsibility keeps you. We're responsible for our load.
We're responsible where it goes and how we secure it. And so we tell the forky, I'd like you to sort of give me those really big pallets first because I'm going to put them over the axles and if they're smaller pallets, I'll put them over the axles. So the driver knows what he's picking up. He's got a run sheet.
He'll know that he might be picking up, for example, 20 pallets. It might not specifically say that one's 10 pallets at one point. Yeah. Yeah.
One point two. So he's going to make a judgment call there there. So you're responsible for stacking and putting a load in your view. That's inferior.
What's your take place? Yeah. Because when you go over the way bridges, if you know, they look at the way it's over the axles. Yeah.
That's the turn of where the toilet one side would you try? Which will make a roll over if you turn a corner of the way towards the right side. Yeah. And they can pin you by saying to you sort of under load on the rear, you've got not enough weight there, you've got more of an up and then they can charge you for it.
But of course, so you do normally, you have to do the computer based test, the knowledge test. If you pass that, then you go and you're doing your driving test depending on what license you want to get. The driving test could be a one day course or it could be a two day course. Usually at the end of that day, the driving instructor will say to you, we're now going to do the examineable part of the whole exercise.
And the driving instructor will then tell you, you know, turn it left turn right, go there, go there, whatever. And that can last for an hour, hour, hour and a half. And that person's monitoring what you're doing. And at the end of it, he'll say you've got a failure because you forgot to put your blinker on or didn't notify you.
You know, give me a good note. If you run out of that cycle. Yeah. What's the yellow bike that sits under a tree?
I thought that was, which is that? But you know, the toughest thing I think with the driving of large vehicles, from my experience, and seeing my guys as well, it's the reverse parking, how to properly reverse park into a small space, a large vehicle, and also adjust your ability to position your vehicle as you're driving, so that you're in the safest place as possible. And you're not either in the left lane or right lane, or whatever, but you are just driving slowly. No, no, that should apply to all drivers.
I mean, you should be looking one car, two cars, three cars ahead, you know, as the traffic slowing down, you know what I saw. And I drove past the intersection yesterday, the traffic light is still not repaired, but about two, three years ago, I saw a tipper truck and it was, it must have bumped the button, rising up and as he left, he took out the over here traffic light and saw the missing that traffic light up to you. That's common to the heart of the region. Yeah, yeah.
But it's always the way, like you get to three lane, you know, arterial rays and two lanes have come to a stop, the big, the outside two lanes, the inside lane is, you know, I've probably left her laying down the straight, so no one's there. And then some bullfish, I'm going to sneak through. Okay, that's fine. And then the other bullfish going down the left, make everyone a stop in the other two lights, slow down, and they go straight through it in the section, you go, and there's a cartoon.
Right, right, right, right to the condition, everyone is slow down. As you get to that brake, slow down, not back, I threw there at 60, that's how my patrol officer once said to me, yes, you can do 60 or 60s over 100, 100s, you can still get pinned for not drive for safety conditions or whatever it was. It's not a 60s zone anymore when it's PTR, everyone is stopped and you think I can just send it up the inside lane. The other thing you've got to say, which always makes me sort of laugh, GPS, sat in there, you're driving around you're hearing talk back and there's an ever ending list of our overhype truck as scores make him on the M5 or Harvard or whatever.
And you know, deep down that the clown's driving are using their car phone, SatNev, which has no truck specific sort of details and they're driving the truck like they drive their car. The more modern sort of sat-nezz on, certainly the more expensive trucks have sat-nezz where you punch in your truck details, how long is it, how high is it, once on a weight, and it'll maneuver you to all the legal roads that you can move that vehicle. And that's fantastic, it should be compulsory, I think on every truck because it would take that because we can't have it. It is, I mean, the truck drivers get a lot of blame for a lot of it's simple stuff.
It's got a bit of planning, a bit of care, I mean, you're the boss, time deadlines, is that from the company, is that from the top down? Like you said earlier, you make your drivers leave early. So obviously, it sounds like in your company, you're giving them pretty flexible arrival deadlines times, call it what you will. Look, we moved away from that car throw, drive through, sort of business where, you know, all these nicoles and your cost goes and their allies have time booking slots.
And if you're not there, they give you 15 minutes of race or a half an hour of race, either side of that booking slot. If you're not there, they tell you to do a U-turn and go away. That's got to be fixed. It's unrealistic with the traffic that we have now with the cities to expect truckies to sort of get from A to B, because the GPS on your phone says it should take 15 minutes to get from A to B, you know, driving a truck.
It just doesn't happen. So those time frames are really tough. And the other thing that, you know, sometimes I'll scratch myself, my head guy's, my head guy's, is that scratch my head guy's, is that a lot of places close early. A lot of places are saying we're shutting down at one o'clock.
You've got to get in here before one, one time you open six. So companies aren't paying overtime. Companies are reducing work hours and they expect all the truckies to sort of get in and out there in confined time frames. They often sack their forklifts.
They don't have two or three forklifts. They've got one poor person there who's copying the views from everyone. Yeah, and you'll see trucks bent up on the street, you're downside sort of main distribution areas, waiting, it's bedtime, waiting to make these fictitious booking slots, which you never get to because there's always 15 trucks in front of you when you get there. So do you know which wholesal which company?
So you try to avoid those contracts. And then we're at least late there. We get on barter, at least the Christmas when, you know, there's a man sort of shit, but yeah, we're sort of moving into work. We're houses aren't super full and we know what we're doing.
Yeah, well, thank you for that insight. I mean, this is a story of everyone. No, that's one of our better, we've got some good ones, but that's very insightful. Yeah, I mean, the purpose of this podcast is to bring in, we're all sharing the same road, we're all driving and that's a car podcast, but I like to bring in a truck driver's perspective on what's happening on these roads.
We're all sharing the roads. I don't know if it'll be a cyclist. Oh, we got a good position. We'll just get ground off the street one day.
But yeah, it's just an insight into how it works. And the purpose of interviews like today is for a driver to be more aware of trucks, given the spaces and the road is there to share. I know that's a line from an advertising campaign, but we've got to, we've got the same amount of lanes, same amount of space. The road doesn't get bigger, certain hours a day.
It's the same road, the courteous, makes space. And if it all flows, it works. And if you want to be the digger that cuts someone off or block a lane because you're going straight to the left and lane and stuff everyone up, it just causes mayhem down the line that you may not notice when you're leaving truck drivers at the same. And then they're carrying the food, the medicine, the drinks you want to go and buy, the chocolates are for Easter.
They're buying you, they're bringing you things that you're going to either buy or they're delivering to you because you've already ordered on Blay Amazon. So thank you for coming in and providing that insight. We've got time. Speaking of mayhem.
I was going to say, you're going to say when you're next to the truck, you're rather than stick your finger up to it. We've been giving the bird just waved. I'm trying to do that. I'm going to make mistakes on the road.
Then I'll wait for my hand up. I always say sorry. Because I know what happens to me, people make a mistake. If they say sorry because more I'm cursing in the car, if they say sorry, you think, well, they said sorry.
If they say sorry, it's like a sentient ex-lentor. Give me the bird or something. So back to the making. Ross isn't here.
He's missed out. You know what you missed out. So I went to the night. I've quietly managed after I've had the car for 15 months.
Yeah? This is a car you're going to keep stuck. Yeah. Well, the more we did, the more we did to this car we're very simple.
Basically, we changed the air intake. We put some larger injectors in it makes sure it gets fuel. Let me get into the loop. We've already seen these H's with the GDSR.
Okay. So we did the airbox. We did the injectors. We put a larger one, pull it on it and set it ahead as, and basically gave it a tune.
We had our taste of creek. I've been taste of creek for quite a bit of 20 years. Yeah, the last time I raced there was in the early 2000s at the old racetrack. Not the new one.
So I went out there with my good make-alls from independent of my bomb mechanics. He did the work for me and seen the performance lead the tune. Shout out. Shout out for us.
So I went out there. He got me. He said, go do this, do this. Put in manual mode, second gear, start your burnout, shifting to third, drive through the water, get a bit of it.
And I was running my standard street tyres. No, no slicks, no special compounds or anything. We went 11.25 out of the box on road tyres. This is a two-tonne road car that I just rocked up at the track week.
And the engine's the right, okay. It's a two-tonne road case. It's the right, it's the right, it's the right, it's the right. So I told you car.
So we went out and back it up with an 119 and an 119 and I was making it. And how's Hanging to put it up on Instagram? We're gonna put it up on Instagram this week. We're gonna put it up on Instagram page this week.
Now that we've spoken about it. So I went home after that. It is what it is. It's the model and I will talk about it 125.
It's not gonna go any faster. So I went home and as soon as I got home, got the same set up, got it out and started looking at more parts. So what we're gonna do is we're not gonna open the engine up. We are not touching internals.
This is all about making the car brief better and make more power using what it has. It's a very, very open engine. So we're looking at what they call a ported snout for the supercharger and a ported supercharger. So just a clean inside of the supercharger, the car sings, ported, polished it, opened it up a bit, more airflow.
We're gonna put an interchiller on it from a forced induction interchiller. This is full of plaques today and interchiller. The interchiller uses the factory air conditioning and basically you have to put a bit more gas in it as well now. But your cabin temps stay the same or less, but it plums into my supercharger.
So when I was leaving the line, post burning up, my intake temps were 34 or 40 degrees. And as you got the track, they're gonna keep quieting. Your timing gets knocked back because the computer's saying, it's getting a bit warm under here. We're not gonna do this today, mate.
So I'm gonna go up back a bit. How about minus five all the way through it? So basically it keeps it all chilled. That's your interchiller.
Here's an Australian company here in Sydney. They've got paints and spending on this. So a lot of cars running it, and they make it for different vehicles as well, not just the HSVs. They turn around and you're running like minus five.