Outback Truckers

Richo owns a fleet of monster trucks and all the problems that go with them. He’s got to get his convoy half way across the Australian continent to the middle of the desert.

Clare and Mark are a trucking couple who complete one of the longest cross country supply runs in the world. Every six weeks they drive as many kilometres as the circumference of the Earth. The distance they can handle, crazy motorists drive them mad and driving level crossings under lights and 10 km above the speed limit.

Gordon and Shui run road-trains to mining outposts in Australia’s remote north. Working around the clock, beating fire and floods. Teeming summer rain is already playing havoc with the schedule of long distance truckie, Mark Bolitho, as he prepares for a marathon five-day trek across the Australian continent. It’s been a good run so far but there are signs of trouble up ahead. A severe thunderstorm with hail, gale force winds and flash flooding hits the truck.

On the edge of the Central Australian desert, Richo’s convoy prepare to hit the dirt roads. It’s going to be a tough ride for his most trusted driver, "Yeti". Up north on the coast road, Shui’s losing patience with a slower road train but overtaking in these elongated rigs is a tricky operation. And it’s not helped by two fellow truckies tying up the CB radio. For Richo’s convoy, rains have closed several roads. Yeti’s truck is in the lead but it’s been badly shaken up.

In Perth lone trucking operator Steve Grahame is preparing for an epic journey. A 3000-kilometre trek to the top of Western Australia. Steve’s a veteran driver with a reputation for getting trucks and goods into places no one else can.

Deb Drew’s got herself a new career. In her previous life she was a model a mother and a business woman. Now she’s a truck driver. She and driving partner Damo are about to set off on a trip to the dead centre of Australia, when they get a late change to their destination. They now need to head to Darwin adding three thousand kilometres to their journey and two days in the driving seat Steve Grahame has been driving for two days. His old engine has had a bad oil leak for the entire trip. If it’s as bad as Steve suspects the engine could explode and the whole trip go up in smoke In Perth Mark Bolitho is getting his rig ready for another 7000 kilometre cross continent trip to Melbourne and back. Riding alongside on the trip will be mark’s driving partner, Clare and their dog, Roy, who never misses a trip.

Deb’s having trouble with the gears on her truck. She’s not used to a manual. With a further delay they are now starting 5 hours late really putting the pressure on. Then on the outskirts of Melbourne, the boss calls.

On a mountainside Steve's road train is giving him all the wrong signals. His road train is fighting a mountain and the mountain is winning. If the hill wins and the truck stops, he’s got a whole new battle on his hands.

Clare and Mark’s road train hits the edge of the vast Nullarbor Plain. Also on the road are two oversize trucks carrying mining equipment. Getting past them in a road train is going to be tricky. Steve’s road train is stuck on the side of a hill. He was only a few metres from making it over the crest but now he’s got the back-breaking job of uncoupling the trailers and pulling them over the top one by one.

Mark and Clare have swapped drivers but while they were stopped, they were passed by the same wide load they overtook earlier. Clare’s flying blind, relying on someone else’s judgement on how safe it is to overtake. Turns out it’s not safe at all.

The light is just starting to go when Steve crosses the Barnett River. It’s recently been in flood and there’s heavy sand on the riverbed that traps Steve’s truck. The fix could be as simple as shovelling some of the sand away. He can’t leave the truck straddling the river over night. There’s time for one last try. If this fails he’s in serious trouble. On the edge of the Central Australian desert Deb’s worried about the number of animals she’s passing on the roadside. No cattle but plenty of sheep close to the road and three that decide they want to cross in front of her.

Back on the highway Mark and Clare have two problems – Roy’s playing up and the wide load they’ve passed twice already has passed them again. Last time Clare was called through there was a truck coming, this time they find another way to annoy her.

Steve is tantalizingly close to his destination—only a hundred kilometres away. But he’s still not confident to push his truck through on the muddy track. To make matters worse he has a slow-leaking tyre that he has to change. The community he’s supplying is so close that reinforcements arrive. It’s a long shot but maybe four-wheel drives can pull him free.

Mark King is a heavy haulage specialist that has to haul a monster rig to a coal mine 700 kilometres away. It's too big for the road and there’s a mountain range to cross. In the wilds of north Western Australia, veteran truckie Steve Grahame is in the middle of an epic journey, trying to deliver essential supplies to a remote community, but the weather and roads are conspiring against him.

In the central Australian desert on the road to Alice Springs, ex-model turned truckie Deb Drew is into the fourth day of a 7000-kilometre trek from Melbourne to Darwin and back. Steve Grahame has been trying for more than a week to get his road train into Kalumburu and he’s stuck just 70 kilometres from his destination. But on these tracks travelling 100 metres can take more than a day. The whole community is relying on Steve to make it through. He’s carrying critical building supplies and food to fill the empty shelves of the local store.

Mark King is a man with a mission – to get an eight-and-a-half-meter-wide, 100-tonne mining dump truck from Brisbane to the booming coalfields of Rollestone. Problem is he has to navigate the monster rig through Toowoomba’s great dividing range. To add more pressure to an already impossible deadline the convoy can only travel through the city at night. Deb’s got a plan to mix a little pleasure with the business of driving and make an unscheduled stop at a place she’s always wanted to see, Uluru (Ayers Rock). But Deb has spotted a problem with one of her trailers and gets some unwanted attention from the law.

Steve Grahame’s road train has been stranded at a remote cattle station. Persistent rain has been filling up a bog hole that he needs to get through. Graders have been working at the hole and the sun has dried it out, to the point where Steve’s ready to risk running his road train at it. There’s no way he can turn his road train around out here so his decision is crucial, turn left and take on the bog hole, turn right and try a longer way.

Dougal Brett is one unusual truckie, he flies his own helicopter, owns a cattle station the size of a small country and a fleet of livestock trucks. His road trains have to haul 1500 cattle to a market nearly 3000 kilometres away. He’s depending on the sale of his cattle to pay bills that have been piling up since the previous season when a live-export ban crippled the market. But the dirt tracks off his remote station are wet and getting wetter.

Heavy haulage driver, Mark King is half-way through a marathon job. He’s in charge of getting a monster mining truck from Brisbane to the central Queensland coal fields, 700 kilometres away. He has the equivalent of over 100 cars sitting on the back of his truck. But weight is not his only problem. Mark’s convoy has to cross a series of mountain passes. The conditions of the road allow no margin for error. There’s a police and pilot escort to help him but it’s the driver who gets blamed if anything goes wrong.

On a lonely dirt road at the top of north Western Australia, veteran Perth truckie Steve Grahame is a broken man. After an epic 3000-kilometre trek from Perth to the remote coastal community of Kalumburu, he’s fallen just 50 kilometres short of his destination. Part of a dirt track has collapsed under the weight of his 100-tonne road train, burying the last two trailers up to their axles. Graders will try to pull him out. If this last attempt fails, Steve’s trailers could be stuck here for the entire wet season.

At Waterloo Station, the rain that stopped Dougal Brett from loading his cattle has cleared. The race is now on to get the cattle rounded up and into trucks before more wet-season rain makes the muddy roads even wetter. Driving cattle trucks with three double-decker trailers, carrying over 200 swaying animals is regarded as one of the toughest trucking jobs there is. And on bad roads, it's twice as tough.

On the road to the Rolleston coal mine in central Queensland, Mark King is worried about the heat. Temperatures have passed the 40-degree mark and that's doing dangerous things to the road surface. Mark is worried his rig’s 180-tonne weight and 650-horsepower engine could start ripping up the melting road from underneath him.

In far North Queensland, tanker driver Steve Hughes is loading up for a supply run to remote clients who need fuel before the wet season cuts them off. At a Perth freight depot tempers are fraying. Husband and wife team, Gordon and Shui, have just finished a two-day non-stop drive but bad weather’s caused them delays. Instead of resting at home, the boss has told them to turn around and do it all again.

At the edge of the desert of the Nullarbor Plain, long-distance husband and wife trucking team Mark and Clare Bolitho are 8 hours into their weekly cross continent run. Riding with them on every trip is their 16-year-old dog Roy.

Steve and his 28,000-litre load of fuel are heading up a mountain pass. With 20 tonnes of fuel on board, Steve’s tanker strains on the steep incline. All he can do is watch, as car after car tries to squeeze past. Then one driver pushes his luck too far. Gordon and Shui are monitoring the sky for signs of the cyclone that’s already played havoc with their schedule. Heavy rain has washed away large chunks of the highway.

Blinding rain is making life hard for tanker driver Steve. His run is taking him deep into the tropical wilderness. Where roads become dirt tracks that can disappear under water in minutes.

Back on the Nullarbor Plain, Roy isn’t enjoying the ride. He’s not been himself for most of the journey. Clare’s increasingly worried. Out here there are no vets. Something is troubling Shui. One of the loads looked to have shifted even worse, something could have fallen off. Gordon and Shui have hit a flooded five-hundred-metre stretch of highway in front of them. Shui has to try to avoid the holes where the road has been washed out. If she drives too close to the edge of the bitumen, she risks ending up in the river. Their trip from hell is about to get worse. They arrive at their destination just as it’s being savaged by the fringes of the cyclone. They need an address for another trailer pick-up. But the depot’s deserted.

Without checking the roads up ahead this is as far as Steve is prepared to go in his fuel tanker. He drives to the banks of a swollen river he can’t cross. The station owner knows it’s a lost cause. Steve can’t deliver and heads for home before more rain arrives.