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Deals on Wheels #464

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Working DEALS<br />

“We had gotten a little m<strong>on</strong>ey together and<br />

I had been looking around a bit, c<strong>on</strong>sidering<br />

the owner-driver route, but I quickly realised<br />

that no <strong>on</strong>e was going to even talk to you if<br />

you didn’t already have a truck,” Luke says.<br />

“So, through a friend, I was put <strong>on</strong>to a<br />

truck for sale, a Ford LTL 9000 Louisville,<br />

with a 444-Cummins engine and a 15-speed<br />

overdrive gearbox.”<br />

It was 1999; the Sheridans promptly bought<br />

the truck, a flat-top trailer and became ownerdrivers.<br />

“It was quite buggered,” Luke recalls.<br />

“But that truck got us going.<br />

“It had little in the way of comfort, leaked<br />

inside when it rained and prompted you to<br />

wear Ugg boots to drive in the winter, but it got<br />

the job d<strong>on</strong>e.”<br />

Ultimately, the LTL would prove to be a<br />

good earner as Southern Star's first truck,<br />

which according to Luke, had two milli<strong>on</strong><br />

kilometres <strong>on</strong> it when they took ownership.<br />

During the subsequent three years that they<br />

had the truck, Luke says all they had to do to it,<br />

apart from routine maintenance, was replace<br />

a turbo and water pump. However, the start<br />

for Southern Star Transport proved to be a<br />

little rocky.<br />

With the optimism of youth and lashings<br />

of naivety, Luke says he thought was going<br />

to set the world <strong>on</strong> fire carting bricks around<br />

Sydney. He was new to the job, and they were<br />

offering good dollars, a solid full-time c<strong>on</strong>tract<br />

and hourly pay. The world was at his feet, or so<br />

he thought.<br />

Riding high in his big new truck, flat-top<br />

trailer and side-mounted Moffett Mounty<br />

forklift, Luke kicked off with excitement in his<br />

inaugural owner-driver role, a role that would<br />

last all of two days.<br />

“On the sec<strong>on</strong>d day I was given a load of<br />

bricks to deliver to a back street somewhere in<br />

Earlwood. I was a boy from the bush and had<br />

little driving experience around the city in a<br />

semi-trailer.<br />

“I drove to the delivery site, which was <strong>on</strong><br />

a hill and I set about unloading the forklift<br />

A Southern Star<br />

Kenworth T610,<br />

followed closely by<br />

a K200, loaded with<br />

c<strong>on</strong>crete sleepers <strong>on</strong><br />

their way to a train<br />

derailment site<br />

I was<br />

green as<br />

green and<br />

knew nothing<br />

131

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