Andy Soutar’s 1973 Kenworth is what kids today would call ‘retro’ but being from the old-school of interstate drivers, to Andy it’s just something that makes him smile.
“I found this thing in a paddock out at Karara, south of Warwick. It was a tray truck and I watched it sitting for about two years as I was driving past in my motorhome, and one day I went in to see about it,” Andy explains of his ’73 Kenworth.
“The bloke wanted $15,000, which was too much. So I let it go for about three months then called him up and said ‘$10,000 cash’ and we did the deal.”
After sitting for an unknown number of years, Andy took a chance and rocked up to the property to collect the truck with the hope of driving it home.
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“I went down and took two batteries. It started straight up and I drove it home. It blew a lot of smoke though and the coppers even pulled me up coming into town,” Andy laughs.
“When I got it home I stripped the tray off and it took me 12 months to do up. I also found out it was a very short wheelbase truck from new – it’s had an extension done on it at some point – and that it was originally bought for the Shell company in Sydney.
“That was its first life, I don’t know who had it after that though.”
Since finishing the resto in 2013, Andy’s taken the Kenny down to Melbourne for Hauling The Hume and also attended a heap of other truck shows around the place. With all that travel to shows Andy must miss the call of the open road?
“Oh my word ‘yes’, I do miss it. I’m too old now, I’m 84. My son drives though. I was an owner-driver my whole life, Brisbane to Adelaide.”
“In fact why OwnerDriver would know me if there’s any of the old-school still about, they used to drop out to my place in Jimboomba every month with about 20 bundles of OwnerDriver magazine and I’d put them in my toolbox and drop them off in Adelaide, Mildura, Broken Hill,” Andy reminisces.
“I used to distribute OwnerDriver magazine, I didn’t get paid for it, I did it just to help them out,” Andy smiles. “And when I retired they put ‘Andy’s last run’ on the cover for me.”
Photography: Ben Dillon