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 />
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