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Slow train to China
Page 68
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Rob Bilato, owner of G&S Transport, runs two operations in
Australia: one centrally in Alice Springs and the other in Karratha on the west coast. He tells a tale of roadtrains and remote places.
It's six in the evening and I'm about to start a night shift. We're loading one of the big boats tonight, so I'll be in the yard loading up and watching as each Kenworth in turn pulls away down to the Dampier Port wharf site to put up to 12,000 tonnes of metal on a boat for China.
This is the end result of one of our contracts for three months now we've been running the four 550hp Cat-powered Kenworths we have here in Karratha out to the Radio Hill mine to collect nickel concentrate and copper.
It's only 50km from base, but with three wagons on the back and mostly dirt under it you can take two-and-a-half or three hours to get out there.The Kenworths have plenty of pull and I've always driven them heavily loaded, but the longer the train, the slower it goes On a good day I'll do three or four of these runs myself, leaving home at 5am and coming back about 7pm.Driving hours are restricted to 14 hours here; you need a half-hour rest after five hours, an hour's rest after the next five and then four hours later it's knocking off time. We have pretty strict enforcement here, although on the eastern seaboard they are much stricter on hours because of the traffic levels.
Here, having a driver stuck in the bush is a safety issue in itself, but even so, if we're caught infringing our hours we can be hit with hefty fines. The distances we travel and the remoteness of the locations present a challenge for the enforcement authorities, but it's good that they keep practices tight.
Overnight stops
Not that the guys mind pulling over, lighting a barbecue and going to bed in the middle of nowhere we carry everything we need.The Kenworths have stoves, fridges and an 'icebox' a small engine that runs all night giving you air-con. And all the drivers have satellite phones, so we can track them.
We followed a concrete contract to Karratha, a 500km run both ways that's still going strong. My brother and Thought the company with three trucks back in 1993, but we had expanded as much as we could in Alice Springs. The gold run we do there out to the Granites andTanami mines is eight or nine hours out into the bush and when it rains-as it is at the moment -the 'roads' become rivers and everything stops.
At least with the new base in Karratha half the fleet stays running. Later on,Alice will run and cyclones will stop work in Karratha. It's all about season, climate and distance here. We had to move to grow, and to ensure that something in the business would always stay moving even when others were parked up. Besides. Karratha has a beach. •