Not bad for an old bloke on his own in an old truck

Here are the photos and story of the truck I bought in Victoria and drove home to Western Australia.

It is a 1994 International AACO 1850, with a Perkins Phaser 210 HP engine. By 1994, they had at last started to galvanise the cabs, so this one has no rust. Earlier ACCOs were real rust buckets.

The trip started out a bit difficult. I was booked to fly over early morning on Tuesday and at the last moment the flight was cancelled. Then the next flight was delayed two hours which would result in missing the Adelaide to Melbourne connection.

I ended up on the red eye midnight horror - arriving in Melbourne at 6.30am on Wednesday.

My son picked me up and we drove 350 kms to Warracknabeal to pick the truck up.

When we got there, we found that it was impossible to find any gears as someone had decided to ‘adjust’ the linkages.

So, we drove 500 kms back to Gippsland and about half way there we received a phone call to say they (sellers) had fixed the problem.

That was enough for one day, so the next day we drove up to Ballarat and I caught a bus back to Warracknabeal to get the truck.

It was about 7pm Thursday when I finally headed out of town in it for the Vic/SA border.

After only 90 kms, the motor started to cut out and within a

By Trevor Tough

couple of minutes it stopped completely.

Obviously a fuel problem, but I couldn’t find where. I was stopped on the edge of the main Melbourne to Adelaide highway and road trains were whizzing by a few feet away at the rate of about 100 trucks per hour.

RACWA, RACVic, TruckAssist and others would not help because the truck was unlicensed and moving on permits.

My son finally found a young bloke who would come out from Border Town, about 70 kms away and just over the SA border. He arrived at about 1.00am, complete with flashing safety lights, work lights and all the tools in the world.

After about ten minutes, he tracked down an electrical fault in a bunch of old wires – oily and dirty that were all taped together and we were back in business.

He then followed me into Border Town to make sure I was safe and we arrived cold and tired at about 2.30am.

For the rest of the trip the old ACCO went like a dream.

Friday Border Town to Port Augusta, Saturday was 1000 kms to WA Border Village, Sunday 800 kms to Widgiemooltha and home Monday by 2.00pm and in time to turn 75 on Tuesday.

Not bad for an old bloke on his own in an old truck.

I had no number plates, but even when two Police cars followed me in Adelaide, they were not interested and then I never saw another Police car all the way home.