The old saying goes, ‘never shop hungry’. For obvious reasons, there are major downsides and consequences. Shopping hungry leads directly to poor choices and a trolly full of diabetes.
Another old adage is ‘never shop angry’ for fear of similar poor choices, or trolleys full of regret and no return clauses. However, there are always exceptions – Cinnabon is the exception to the ‘never shop hungry’ claim because there’s always room for Cinnabon and, when it comes to exceptions for ‘never shop angry’, I have tracked down a 120-tonne rated exception.
Down in the tiny Victorian town of Wangaratta is where I found Luke Keams and the striking green, gold and white Mack Super-Liner that is the end product of an angry shopping spree. While the origins of this mighty Mack may have manifested from frustration and discontent, the angry shopping spree has delivered an epically cool truck and an extremely happy shopper.
Keep in mind I am using a fair bit of artistic license when I credit this creation solely to an impulse angry reaction. There was obviously a lot more going on behind the scenes – however, to quote another old saying, ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story’.
Luke Keams had been actively looking for a new truck and this whole adventure began because he had been approached by a salesman who offered a build spot for the kind of truck he wanted. It was down the line a bit and would ideally be rocking up after the next harvest season, so Luke jumped at the offer and got back to doing what he does best – working his butt off.
“We got busy, fertiliser season went through, and I figured that the truck would be almost due,” Luke says.
“When I rung up, I found it didn’t even have a build date. I was very disgruntled at the time.”
He used words with less letters, but my artistic license won’t let me print those.
“So, I walked down the road into John Templeton’s office at CMV Wodonga and said, ‘I want this, this and this, can you build it?’ I was shopping very angry,” he says.
John’s reply was like any good salesman – ‘Yes, yes, yes, and let’s build it’. It was the reaction Luke was after and, as his anger dissipated, his excitement and enjoyment levels skyrocketed.
“I had an awesome time with this build, I knew we weren’t going to make it for harvest, so we just took our time,” he says.
“I wanted a big truck and, dealing with John, and then Ryan at BlingHQ, it was really good.”
We should jump back to the angry shopping bit and delve into exactly what Luke was shopping for and also why. The why is fairly simple – Luke needed a new truck to add to the ever-increasing workload of the family company he started back in 2015 in Keams Fertilisers.
“I’ve grown up around trucking, it has always been a part of my life,” he says.
“As a kid, I was 100 per cent a truck nut. I remember when I was real young, Dad was doing stock, so when I was good, I’d get to go with him. I remember an old T650, and I also remember a K100E too.”
Luke’s Dad Allan ran his own trucks as well, beginning with a Volvo body truck carting local produce, then getting his own Kenworth K100E and semi to move greater volumes of produce. Allan ensured his son’s formative trucking years were stacked with learning experiences from stock to produce, linehaul to float work, and let’s not forget the mixture of working as a company driver as well as his owner driver years. Luke got to experience the learning curve of trucking from a very young age. Eventually that road would lead to Luke partnering up with his Dad carting logs around the Wangaratta area.
However, it wasn’t a direct route to a logging truck career for Luke. Like a lot of us, schooling was more a 10-week interruption between school holiday truck trips than it was a vessel of education. Hence Luke took the opportunity to ditch the school bells as soon as he could and undertook an automotive apprenticeship.
“I was doing light vehicles then, but the dealership closed up and it was really tough for a fourth year apprentice to get work in garages then,” Luke admits.
“So I ended up doing a bit of farm contracting. I was getting to drive all the tractors and trucks around on the farm. I did that for a few years.”
Although he loved the farming life, and the agricultural lessons he absorbed would eventually play a major role in his life, at 21 he packed away his wellies and headed back to work for his old man, who was now running his own log trucks.
“I was in an old International S-Line, doing pine and then eventually moving onto hardwood,” he says.
“As that grew, we bought other trucks. Dad bought a Mack Trident brand new and we also had a 650 day cab.”
Now, bridging the gap between Keams Transport Services carting logs and Keams Fertiliser specialising in carting supplying and spreading bulk products may seem like quite a leap, but the chasm narrows when you factor in the family’s ability to pivot with their work. From the logging side, Luke was starting to get a bit of grain work for the trucks on the side. The Mack Trident ended up getting stretched and retrofitted with a bunk and Luke soon became a permanent grain carter.
Soon enough, Allan was folding down the bolsters and hooking up to a tipper set and joining Luke in the harvest season.
“It was great, we’d both travel around together a lot, doing the season,” he says.
“Over time, Dad bought a couple other new trucks, including a Mack Super-Liner as well.”
All of this was in the early part of the 2010s, around the time Luke and his then-partner Amy were welcoming their son Harrison into the world. Luke was feeling the effects of extended periods away and wanted more quality family time at home.
“I wanted to be home a bit more with the family and was talking to a local bloke here in Wangaratta with a fertiliser business,” he says with the typical Aussie can-do spirit.
“He was looking to get out and I realised there really wasn’t anyone doing the whole deal – selling the fert, carting the fert and spreading it. So, it all rolled into one and we decided to give it a go.
“This was me going out on my own, but Dad helped me out again. I bought my first spreader and Dad leased me the old Mack and I got into it.”
The work involved carting recycled glass out of Wangaratta down to Melbourne, then taking fertiliser back up. It would be a 3am start and back to the depot by lunch, where he’d swap hats and load up the spreader with the fertiliser he’d brought up and go fulfil the orders that had been coming in while he was on the road.
The successful concept grew quicker than the crops Luke was cultivating, and soon enough the business was accumulating more trucks, more spreaders and more drivers.
“After the first year, the work just exploded,” he says.
“Originally the truck side of it was meant to be a fallback to keep us doing something if the fertiliser and spreading was quiet, but it just got busier. It is a small community and people like that they can get it all taken care of with one call.
“They liked not having to call someone to buy the fertiliser, then another person to pick it up and another one to bring it out and spread it.”
2015 was the birth of Keams Fertiliser and, within two years, a second truck was added.
“We started with second-hand trucks, every cent we were getting we put back into the company,” he says.
“The second truck was an old K104. Then we bought a second-hand K200 and also a second-hand Western Star. We were buying new trailers but towing it around with older gear.
“By 2020 we could see it was costing a fair bit to keep the trucks up to spec, so when they released the Kenworth SAR Legends, I decided to order my first brand new truck. I was a big fan of the old-school set-up of the Legends, so it was an easy decision.”
The steady solidification of Keams Fertiliser and the steady increase of clients led to the need for more trucks and eventually led to Luke’s angry shopping at CMV in Wodonga. Obviously the bulldog brand had been part of Luke’s DNA before – he leased the old Super-Liner off his Dad to get the business up and running, as well as having quite an affiliation for the old Trident he had began his grain carting career with.
“I’ve had Macks before and loved them. The Super-Liner out there (referring to the original Super-Liner parked outside that still waves the Keams flag on the road) was one of the last with a Cummins motor in it,” he says.
“So when I marched into John’s office, I knew what I wanted, I laid it all out and John was awesome in helping me get everything I wanted.”
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The list of requirements revolved mainly around the decent wheelbase and the heavy duty, big truck.
“I didn’t get everything I wanted as it just wouldn’t work. I wanted the 62’ bunk but I also wanted the big pipes up the side, but with that being an American sleeper, they couldn’t alter it,” he says.
“They could make it work with the 58’ bunk though. I was really impressed by the broad range of options when it came to setting up the Macks, especially with the sleepers. You can do so much with the interior and sizes.”
Another spec that was on Luke’s shopping list was the mid-rise roof with the dovetail. Purely for cosmetic uniformity, knowing the truck would have a set of tippers behind it, Luke wanted the flow-through look that would come with the mid-rise roof.
There were also a few options that John helped steer Luke towards as well, such as the Champion Bonnet that can now be factory spec’d on the Super-Liners.
“I knew nothing about them to be honest, I got shown some photos of the big square bonnet with square guards and square bonnet with the round guards,” Luke laughs.
“It looked cool, John had another one he was building and he rung me one day when it was in and said to come down and have a look at it, and as soon as I saw it I said yes, order me one of those.”
When it came to dressing the new ride and fitting the fancy parts, Luke had pretty strong ideas about that too.
“Colour-wise, I’ve always like green. All the second-hand trucks we’ve bought have just happened to be green,” he says.
“The SAR Legend was the first truck we got to fully design the colours and lines on. I spent hours with paper and pencils designing it. When I got to do it with the Mack, I decided to reverse the colours and just add some gold in as well. So, it’s the same set-up as the Legend, but with more green.”
With the Big Mack getting built up in Mack’s Wacol factory, the truck went off to Bel-Air for the paint job.
“The guys there were great, they’d sent me photos when they were lining it and let me make adjustments, so it suited the truck better. They were really good,” he says.
When it came to the exterior additions, Luke had a few concepts that he knew were different but was pushing for anyway. It was the team at IcePack Services and BlingHQ that ensured Luke got what he wanted.
“My first priority was seeing if we could do something about the exhaust cover on the driver’s side of the Mack, so John introduced me to Ryan at BlingHQ,” he says.
“Ryan is great at what he does, loves what he does and basically said to me, ‘mate we can do anything you want, I just need the time’, I told him I wanted this to be cool and left him with it.”
Now, armed with that information, look at the photos again. On the driver’s side, the exhaust has a full cover over it, giving a three tank look to the big rig.
“We still have the cover, as there is a lot of heat around there and we weren’t entirely sure how a cover would go. But the way Ryan built it, we haven’t had any issues,” he says.
On the passenger side you will notice the Icepack Services team have designed a similar cover for the side mounted Icepack system, giving the truck a very universal look.
Obviously, fixing the exhaust cover was just one item on the BlingHQ to-do list.
“Ryan has very good taste, after I met with him the list had gotten bigger, and I just left it with him. He knocked it out of the park though. I wanted a cool truck and that’s what I got,” he says.
By the time it rolled out of Icepack Services Toowoomba, BlingHQ, Bel-Air and Mr Bullbars, the truck had fulfilled every aspect of Luke’s wish list. It looked like perfection personified and the only thing left was to hook it up and see how the solid stick man would go with an idle left leg.
“I can’t fault the truck, especially the driveline when you are stuck in the Melbourne traffic. When I first drove it, I thought it was lugging too low and waiting too long to change. So, on an Adelaide run, I left it in manual and did it myself. I reckon I made it worse,” he says.
“I was slower and, in the end, I just switched back and let it do the work. I’m most impressed with how it handles the big weights. It doesn’t lose momentum; it just handles it with ease. It definitely makes my job easier.”
As much as Luke now appreciates the decisiveness and intuitiveness of the mDrive box, his enthusiasm also extends to the power and torque of the big MP10 motor.
“We’ve always up there with our weights and this truck just doesn’t feel any of it,” he says.
I think it would be fair to say, as Luke surmises the end result of his reactionary angry shopping spree, that this outstanding truck preforms and presents perfectly. Shopping angry may not always be a bad thing.
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