The mega milk man

Steve BrooksAugust 16, 2023, 10:09 amAugust 16, 2023

AUGUST TRUCK OF THE MONTH: From an inauspicious start with one truck in 1996, SRH Milk Haulage principal Scott Harvey learned early the value of productivity. The lessons, however, appear to have found their highest achievement in Western Australia with the recent creation of what is almost certainly Australia’s biggest dedicated milk tanker combination

There’s something delightfully ironic in the fact that a West Australian company which prides itself on being Australia’s oldest dairy operation has become a beneficiary of the biggest and possibly most advanced milk tanker combination in the country, if not the world.

Yet while the Brownes Dairy operation dates back to 1886 when a farmer named Edward Browne hand milked a relatively small herd of cows, the company’s evolution over the past 137 years now sees more than 50 dairy farms in WA’s south-west producing around 150 million litres of milk a year.

Moving all that moo-juice on a daily basis from Brownes Dairy’s holding plant at Brunswick Junction near Bunbury to the company’s processing facility in the Perth northern suburb of Balcatta is, obviously enough, a major transport undertaking with miniscule tolerance for inefficiencies or interruptions.

It is, however, exactly the type of operation which has long fired the commercial and creative ambitions of SRH Milk Haulage principal Scott Harvey. What’s more, it certainly doesn’t deter the candid and pragmatic Harvey that Brownes Dairy operates on the opposite side of the country to SRH’s home base at Rutherford in the NSW Hunter Valley.

In fact, despite its core business still being single-trailer farm pick-up operations, the 70-strong SRH fleet today spans a wide swathe of country in everything from farm pick-up to regional bulk deliveries and linehaul runs, from bases as far afield as Rutherford, Raleigh on the NSW north coast near Coffs Harbour, Poowong in Victoria’s Gippsland and East Picton, about 160km south of Perth.

Various configurations

Flexibility is the key, Scott states, and depending on the job and the location, configurations range from single tankers to 19 and 20 metre doubles, 25 metre B-doubles and 26 metre A-doubles, or pocket roadtrains in WA.

Typically though, the move into Western Australia more than a decade ago provided the opportunity for development of SRH’s biggest tanker combinations, including eight-wheeler prime movers pulling two tri-axle tankers in the Brownes Dairy operation. This combination, says Scott Harvey, legally carries 60,000 litres of milk and remains a highly productive unit on the 180km run from Brunswick Junction to Balcatta.

By his own admission though, Scott isn’t shy about looking for bigger, better ways to enhance productivity and with the critical technical support and engineering expertise of Tieman Tankers in WA and Volvo Group Australia’s Wacol (Qld) factory, SRH has since June this year added a combination which takes bulk milk haulage to an entirely new level.

Simply explained, the 15-axle road train combination is hauled by a tri-drive Volvo FH 700 built at Wacol, coupled to a quad-axle tanker linked to a tri-axle dolly and another quad axle tanker, with the dolly and Tieman tankers riding on BPW axles.

All up, the unit stretches over 32 metres and has a legal capacity of 73,000 litres of milk, with PBS (performance-based standard) approval to operate at a gross weight of 111 tonnes.

According to Scott Harvey, achieving PBS approval was a typically detailed process but equally, the exercise was “largely hassle-free”. Tieman Tankers is, he remarks, one of only two tanker brands (the other being Byford) used by SRH, further describing Tieman’s WA operation as “an extremely good company to work with.”

Likewise, Scott admits Volvo’s flagship FH 700 was the only truck considered for the new combination. The first truck he and wife Regina ever bought was a Volvo and of the 280-plus trucks purchased over the past 27 years or so, at least 250 of them have been various Volvo models, with FH 600s and 700s established as the standard for multiple tanker combinations on both sides of Australia.

In fact, after driving the new quad-axle combination on its maiden voyage, an obviously satisfied Scott Harvey said the 700’s road handling and performance with 3150Nm of torque on tap were exceptional. “It blew me away just how easy it did the job,” he insists.

Despite a relatively short return trip of 360km to Balcatta and back, the combination won’t be doing much idle time with Scott asserting that annual mileage will be around 300,000km a year.

“It’s designed to work long and hard, not just look good,” he says with a shrewd smile.

For more stunning big rigs and pictures, see OwnerDriver‘s August 2023 print edition!