When he needed a prime mover for triple road train work, Alan Moyle chose Australia’s most powerful truck.
Like many Australian owner-operators, Alan Moyle has spent most of his working life behind the wheel of a North American truck. In Alan’s case, 20 years in Kenworths are included in his 35 years’ driving experience.
Currently, however, Alan’s steed is a Scania R730, which he uses to haul grain from Western Australia’s wheat belt region to the port city of Albany where it is shipped out to global markets.
His previous truck was also a European make, a MAN. But while the German-manufactured unit proved to be able on both the bitumen and in the paddock, Alan needed something with more grunt.
“We were carting woodchips at the time, and I was pulling two trailers with the MAN, but the woodchip finished and I started hauling grain again,” Alan explains.
“I really needed to pull three trailers, not two. So that’s why I needed to buy a Scania, something with a bit more horsepower.”
More to the point, Alan needed a prime mover that was capable of pulling a 130-tonne GCM 60-wheeler road train.
With its Southern Regional Transport (SRT) logo on the special purpose Evertrans end-tipper trailers, the Advanced Herd Bars stainless steel front bumper, Alan’s rig looks the goods.
And that’s not the only reason it stands out.
Alan says SRT is a Kenworth stronghold, although there’s also couple of Western Stars and a 700hp (522kW) Volvo. The R730 is the only Scania in the yard.
“We’ve got about 25 road trains going every day, carting grain plus frozen food out of Perth and stuff like that,” Alan says.
With recent rains pointing to a bumper grain season, Alan is preparing to rack up a lot of kilometres.
“We’ve had two above average years in a row now, which is almost unprecedented. If they have another year it’s going to be huge,” he says.
“I can’t see us shifting all of last year’s grain this year. We had half a million tonne to move and we’re not even half way through that yet.”
At age 67, Alan is often asked when he’s going to retire.
For now he’s happy to keep on driving.
“While the job’s this easy I’ll keep doing it for a little while and eventually I’ll put a driver in the truck.”
Read Alan’s full story and check out the centre spread poster in the July edition of Owner//Driver magazine.