There is no arguing that the Volvo truck catalogue contains an extremely diverse selection. They have a truck for every occasion, stacked with state-of-the-art technology, class leading safety features, peak power performance and torque curves that’ll make your eyes water. They pride themselves on supplying safe, reliable and cost-effective equipment designed to be economically and mechanically efficient. They pretty much have a set-up to suit any and all applications. And while on the practical side globally they can build whatever you need, on the aesthetics side of things, Volvos down under don’t receive the same attention that their European counterparts receive.
A lot of that is dictated by the vehicle measurement differences between hemispheres, the weight limits per country, the road conditions and the fact that a 14-hour day in Europe sees you traverse half a dozen countries, while in Australia it’ll only see you past five roadhouses, three fuel stops and a handful of rest areas. The Volvos that prowl the Australian Outback highways are more often than not out there doing the hard yards with very little glamour.
When a young Irishman decided he needed his own heavy haulage behemoth to transport equipment for his contract crushing company, his Irish roots and European influences of said roots saw him buy a brand-new Volvo. But Cahal Carey didn’t just want a workhorse, he wanted a showpiece.
“Everything we do here we do to the highest standard, so when we ordered the truck, we wanted that to reflect the effort we put in across the whole company,” he says.
With memories and influences from his Irish ancestry, Cahal got the ball rolling on what has become one of the coolest XXL Volvos gracing our highways.
An Irish influence in our transport arena is not an uncommon occurrence. In fact, the Irish influence on Australian culture and history is extremely profound. It is estimated that anywhere from 10 to 30 per cent of the Australian population has either full or partial Irish heritage.
The Irish have played a huge roll in the history of this country, from the likes of Ned Kelly, whose old man Jon ‘Red’ Kelly came from Tipperary, to brothers John and James Toohey, founders of Tooheys Brewery, who came from County Limerick. You have the likes of Mick Fanning, another one with Irish ancestry through his dad, born in Malin Head in County Donegal. Or if you are of a more literary persuasion, you may know the name Tom Keneally, via his grandparents who hailed from County Cork – this legendary novelist and playwright is another one for the list. In case you didn’t attend any of his lectures, he is also famous for his 1982 publication ‘Schindler’s Ark’ which became the award-winning movie ‘Schindler’s List’.
While these are some of the more renown Australian-Irish descendants, the fact is the Irish are a huge part of Australian working culture, which I learnt a lot more about when I managed to slow Cahal Carey down long enough for an interview. The ‘Culchie’ from the Glens of Antrim, who came over to Australia to have some ‘craic’ and ‘give it a lash’, talked me through his transition from a shovel swinging plumber to ‘sucking diesel’ with a second hand 13t digger and is now ‘up to 90’ with his highly successful contract crushing business. All of this has led to Cahal purchasing his first heavy haulage truck and top spec float and, as you can see, this eyewatering Irish influenced automobile is ‘deadly’.
Before we get into the story, let me just explain a few of the comments from the previous paragraph. Firstly, the statements highlighted in the previous paragraph are my attempt to incorporate a touch of Irish slang into this feature. Culchie is a term for someone from rural Ireland. Craic means fun. Give it a lash obviously means to give it a go, while sucking diesel is an expression used to mean making progress. Up to 90 implies someone is extremely busy and deadly is Irish slang for awesome or great.
I will no doubt try and intertwine a few Irish digs into this tall tale and, as a card-carrying Kiwi and lifelong rugby fan, I am allowed a little extra leeway when it comes to ‘acting the maggot’ (or in Kiwiana – ‘taking the piss’). The Irish are our Achilles heel when it comes to the footy, and because of the respect we have for them, our best way of expressing that is to have some ‘craic’ at their expense. Hence while we are focused on this Irishman’s perfectly put together Volvo, and the Australian companies that have been integral in its finished appearance, I will take some jabs throughout, so don’t ‘take a dander’.
Back to my interview with the young entrepreneur and his extremely impressive excursion into trucking. As I mentioned earlier, trucking is not Cahal’s forte. Growing up in Ireland, he was always fascinated with trucks and loved seeing the cool lorries that graced the Irish highways – his brother-in-law even runs several trucks back home on the Emerald Isle.
Cahal, however, followed the pipes rather than the pedals and became a plumber. Armed with a plumbing trade, youth and exuberance and I’m assuming a desire for a more enjoyable climate, 21-year-old Cahal packed his duffle and came over to Australia in 2003 with barely a four-leaf clover to his name.
“All the Irish boys seemed to be working the tunnels in Sydney, so I ended up there,” he recalls.
“I’d done a little bit of plumbing, but the money wasn’t great, so I went to the tunnels. I was on the end of a shovel and the guy didn’t turn up to drive the excavator and the boss asked me to have a go and that’s where I started.”
It’s a very humble summation by the Irishman, but also pretty accurate. He took to the excavator work like an Irishman to Guinness and pretty soon got the opportunity to buy his own little 13t digger and begin the journey to what is now Glendun Contract Crushing, an arm of Glendun Group.
Digging out the Sydney Tunnels soon led to a shift to Brisbane – by that stage he had accumulated a few more bits of equipment and put them to work in the Brisbane tunnel projects. Contacts and opportunities there soon led to Cahal investing in some crushing plant equipment and working out west. The professionalism and approach the young Irishman took on site soon led to more opportunities, followed by more opportunities, which led to more gear, more employees and so on and so forth.
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Which leads us into 2023, 20 years since Cahal had landed in Australia and, with an equipment and machinery count over the 200-piece mark, Cahal decided he wanted to look at putting his own transporter on the books.
“It completes a part of the puzzle when you can move your own equipment around,” Cahal admits, who up until that point had been using a contractor when gear needed returned or relocated.
“It makes more sense – we can plan projects better and when there’s a last minute issue we are able to move it ourselves, it adds a lot more flexibility to what we do.”
I reiterate, Cahal and the Glendun crew are not truck people. Cahal’s a truck fan, but that’s a far cry from knowing where
to start when it comes to purchasing a brand-new truck and float setup. Cahal’s office manager Sarah Emery explained
the process of purchasing a float came from observing the contractors they dealt with.
“We only deal with the best, that’s what we’ve built this company on and that’s how we approach every deal and
every job,” she says.
“None of us had experience with trailers but we noticed the best were all using Drake. So, we went straight to Drake.”
The Glendun team took a similar approach to purchasing the trailer as they would when they chose a truck. They explained to Drake exactly what they would be doing, explained what sort of gear they would be moving – maximum and minimum, and let the people in the know tell them what they needed. That would turn out to be the stunning Drake 5X8 widener and 2X8 dolly.
When it came to the truck, well there really wasn’t much of a debate there. Growing up in Europe with the landscape dominated by the two big Swedish powerhouses, Cahal had his hat in the Volvo camp.
“We run a lot of Volvo gear anyway,” he states. “So we’re familiar with the brand and we know how good it is. We went and saw the guys at VCV Pinkenba and they have been fantastic to deal with. Like the trailer, we explained what we wanted to do with it, and they talked us through the best set-up.”
Dressing the big purchase was the next challenge for Cahal.
“The Volvos and Scanias around Ireland are finished off with a bit more detail,” he says.
“Over here it’s not quite the same. Like back at home this would just be a pretty basic truck, but here it stands out. If you see a Volvo or Scania coming down the road finished off differently, it’ll probably be an Irishman.”
Once the decision on ‘what’ truck was finalised, dressing it up was a project the truck nut side of Cahal had already fine tuned.
“I’d already been doing a bit of Pinterest-ing and stuff, looking at designs back home, and found one with lines like this back in Holland,” he explains, adding that the colours were already set.
“The colors of our logo and on our branding was black, white and grey, so we stuck with that.”
The truck got sent from Volvo off to Bel Air Truck Spray painting in Darra, where Rob and his team set to work on bringing the Holland design onto a big, black Aussie Volvo. Bel Air also painted the tanks and the Icepack, keeping the whole unit nicely streamlined.
Next step for Cahal and his first truck was finding someone to take the working showpiece to the next level, adding the extra touches needed to make the truck stand out.
“It’s not easy finding people that spec out the Volvos, but the guys put me on to Ryan at Bling HQ and he’s been great. I did have to convince him I needed all the lights though,” Cahal laughs.
Ryan has had his fair share of Volvos through his Hattonvale workshop, but the Glendun FH was one of the biggest Volvo projects for Bling HQ and a challenge Ryan was ready to take on.
“Cahal was very much influenced by the European look and you can see that with the big lightbar on the roof,” Ryan says.
“I built that and had it painted rather than polished and Cahal ordered the lights out of Europe for me to fit. It can be a challenge with the Volvos as you can’t do a lot to them, versus the likes of a Kenworth where you can take nearly everything off and do something. It can be a real challenge and that’s what I like about it. Customer demand has led me to come up with ways of changing and adding to the Volvos.”
A good example of this is when you look at the rear end of the big FH.
“I put a full width bumper bar sleeve on the back end, which most people don’t do,” Ryan says, adding in a few of the other specialty parts he designed and built.
“I fitted the dual exhaust, which apparently they do over there as well. I built the trim up, the Suzi plate to tidy that up, as well as the drive guard assembly to cover the air tanks. I added in a drain valve chain to drain the tanks. And then there’s all the other little things like mudflap pieces, wrapped tanks, extra LEDs – all up there was about 400 hours of work in this one.”
Ryan became quite familiar with Cahal over those 400 hours as the Irishman would venture out to Hattonvale on numerous occasions to discuss and add extra ideas to the growing Volvo to-do list. Those trips became a bit of a touchy subject for office manager Sarah over the course of the build.
“I did have to pull Cahal up with the stainless, he just kept adding more. He was like a kid in a candy store to be honest,” Sarah laughs, though she is quick to point out why.
“We want to be known as the best contract crushers in Australia and this truck would be representing us. It needed to look as professional as we are, and show the pride we take in our work.”
I can’t wrap this up without reiterating both Sarah and Cahal’s accolades for the man who gets the pleasure of steering this beast around Australia – Warren McCarthy.
“We are so lucking to have him as part of the team. Not just because he washes that truck more than I do my car,” Cahal laughs.
“But he knows his stuff when it comes to heavy haulage.”
Sarah agrees, heaping praise on the driver for helping the whole team wrap their heads around what can and can’t be done and, most importantly, how to do it correctly.
It very much seems that Glendun Contract Crushing, and Glendun Group as a whole, have managed to put together the perfect package for a first-time float. The right driver, the right setup. The perfect trailer combination and the picture-perfect truck. Just like the day back in ‘03 when Cahal dropped the shovel and succeeded on his first attempt as an excavator operator, the Irishman has put down his crushing gloves and tried his hand at truck design, and the result is quite simply ‘Uanhnach’ (it’s Gaelic, look it up).
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