Famed test cricketer and WWII fight pilot, Keith Miller once told TV talk show host Michael Parkinson, that real pressure was when you had a ‘Messerschmitt up your clacker at 30,000 feet’
A story from Scania this week reminded us of that credo by the famed all rounder, but we doubt heavy haul operator, John Irwin felt the same sort of pressure when he looked in his mirrors to see a Douglas A-20 Havoc bomber behind his truck recently.
Irwin apparently has plenty of military transport experience behind him, but in all his years moving big gear, he reckons he has never had an aerial bomber on the back of his truck. That was until his recent encounter.
“This was the first time for me having a low-flying bomber behind me,” Irwin said with some relish.
“I have spent a lot of time with army tanks on the back of the truck, as well as transporting Bushmasters in recent years, but this was a new experience,” the owner of Irwin Logistics reported.
While the Irwin payload was no challenge to his Scania 770 R V8 , he reckons the smoothness of the truck and its accurate steering and airbag front end played a crucial role in the safe transit of the load through some pretty hairy experiences traversing the A2 and A7 in Queensland.
The Douglas A-20 Havoc bomber aircraft in question, dubbed ‘Hell’n Pelican II’, weighs eight-tonnes, and has a fascinating history behind it.
The Douglas was operational in WWII in Papua New Guinea in 1944. It was not shot down but had to make an emergency bad weather crash-landing in Madang after running out of fuel. The captain and his gunner had to trek 15 days behind enemy lines through thick jungle to escape.
The plane was one of two salvaged from PNG in 1984, winched out of the jungle by a Chinook helicopter, and brought back to Australia where the heritage centre at RAAF Base Amberley, near Brisbane, painstakingly put them back together over a ten-year restoration. The second plane is already in display at Point Cook in Victoria.
The Douglas is set to return to PNG in 2025, to be displayed by their National Museum and Art Gallery, as part of the celebrations for PNG’s 50 years of independence.
The ship booked to move the plane to Port Moresby, however was in Townsville, which was when John Irwin came into the picture.
“So, an aircraft is not particularly heavy, but it is wide, even with the wings removed,” Irsin said
Oversized movements are our game, but 10 metres wide is big, even for us, probably double the width of anything we have hauled before,” he added.
“The trip to Townsville from Amberley was quite slow and frustrating in parts, and it took us seven hours to get to Dalby, which is only 200 km.
“On some of the roads we were able to get up to speed and get going. We had a team of four pilots and two police cars with us to clear the route and mostly people were ok about pulling over to let us through,” Irwin said.
“It’s not every day you see a 10metre 
wide plane coming at you along the highway,” he confessed.
“There was one young fella in a ute who almost took the starboard side engine off the plane, he just didn’t see us coming, if you can believe that,” Irwin said.
The trip to Townsville took three days in all, and aside from leaving at night, most of the driving was done during daylight hours.
Naturally the route was pre-checked by a team to spot height and width issues, although there was some miscalculation in Dalby where the 10 metre wide load had to shuffle down a 9.5 metre wide section crab-like.
“In Dalby we had street furniture and overhanging power lines, and I had about 9.5 metres to play with, with a 10 metre wide load, so I would go through on one side, reverse back and pull the truck over to the other side, get through that side and vice versa,” Irwin said.
“When we got to Emerald, we used the old bypass and were able to squeeze through with about 20 cm either side of the railway line.
Despite the stress of the driving, Irwin found time to snap off a few images of the warbird on his truck, including shooting at night using only the moonlight and the stars for illumination, resulting in some hauntingly powerful images.
“I didn’t have a flash or any gizmos to take the shots, I just lay on the ground and took some long exposures with a steady hand,” he said.
“The paintwork on the Scania really popped.”
Irwin’s blue 770 V8 is the latest Scania V8 to join his fleet and has racked up 90,000 km of heavy hauling in just the first six months.
Normally it is tasked with carrying big gear on a quad low-loader for the Department of Defence, including dozers, and he claims it’s been returning impressive fuel figures fof around 2.4 km per litre, a result that he reckons he is pretty pleased with.
“The 770 is fitted with the CR23 extended cab, so there’s plenty of room inside. It’s got a big bed to go with the big motor,” Irwin said.
“The most impressive aspect of the big V8 is the pulling power coming up the Range.
“We can have the big gear on the back, but the truck just marches up the Range at a steady 50 km/h, leaving the other big trucks for dead.
“She starts getting into those hills and she’ll just drop down, find a gear and just sit on that speed. I’ve got a bonneted American truck behind me, driven by a subbie with the exact same load on, probably six-tonnes lighter overall, and it can only get up at 40 km/h,” Irwin emphasised.
“The other huge advantage of the 770 V8 is the front end is on airbags and I will never buy another steel spring truck again,” he said.
“The Scania airbag front end is a complete game changer, you just don’t realise how different they are on air.
“In my Scania 580 with parabolic springs,, I’d get up to Goondiwindi and I’d have to pick up all the stuff that I had on my dash when I left Brisbane from the passenger footwell, like my souvenir beer mats, ball caps and paperwork.
“On this truck with airbags, nothing falls off the dash, which makes it much better to drive and at the end of the day reduces the fatigue.
“So now I have a Scania 660 V8 on order bringing the Scania fleet size up to seven, and that will get a new quad super tilt trailer behind it, so the fleet will have three super tilts and two low loaders. We’re that busy the new truck is needed to cope with the workload,” Irwin said.
“But as for planes, I think that’s it for a while,” he said.
