Earthmoving, demolition and shiny are not words that tend to go together with ease. I’m not saying they don’t align with each other at all, but if you were undertaking one of those word association games, my money would be on earthmoving and dirt, demolition and debris, or even more likely, some derivative of earthmoving, demolition and big yellow excavators. The collaboration of earthmoving, demolition and shiny just doesn’t seem as linear, understandably so when you think of the conditions earthmoving equipment operates in. However, tucked away in the foothills of Queensland’s Tamborine region is a small family company that is breaking that mould – TKN Earthworks Group.
TKN Earthworks is an earthmoving company with a trucking addiction.
“The trucks are a by-product of our business,” TKN Earthworks project manager Travis Northcott admits.
It’s a by-product that’s necessary to keep the company going, but a by-product nonetheless. The condition and standards the trucks, and all the earthmoving gear, is kept in is a by-product of Travis’ upbringing.
“When they are out there, they are a representation of our business – clean. Clean is the word,” he says.
“People know if we are going to present like that, we are going to leave their footpath or road clean.”
It is a mantra that sees all the company’s gear looking like new every day it rolls out the company gates, normally on the back of an immaculately presented ‘by-product’ – AKA a TKN Earthworks Group truck. And it is a mantra that has drawn me to sit down and chat with Travis and his son Bailey to see how we got here.
While the pages before you are graced with the company’s very first brand new Kenworth, a T909 sporting all the bells and whistles, I could easily write feature stories on any number of the half a dozen stunningly restored working Kenworths in this impressive fleet – from the ex-Campbell’s K104 Aerodyne that hit the road for Travis when he wanted to indulge in a little linehaul work, and is now a stretched out tidy tipper, to maybe the flat roof 104 that got torn down and rejuvenated to be able to tow around one of TKN’s semi tippers. It is not just the Kenworths that warrant attention – among the 14 odd ‘by-products’ of TKN Earthworks are a handful of impeccable ACCOs, sporting more bling and stainless than I believe every other ACCO on the road combined. There are some incredibly well presented Hinos, again sporting stainless out the wazoo and enough shine to blind the beaches of Bondi. Although Travis wants to play down the ‘by-products’, his approach to business, family and trucks seems pretty universal. Do it right and do it proudly.
You will find throughout this story I have made several assumptions and generalisations that comes about because Travis is about as humble a bloke as you can get. He doesn’t do what he does for the glory, and as cliché as it sounds it isn’t done for the money. Travis does it because he enjoys it.
“I love having a good team around me, our staff are family and as long as the wages are paid, the bills are covered and our team is happy, that’s why I do this,” he says.
Trucking and earthmoving have always been in Travis’ blood. His father Ken was into the earthmoving side of things when Travis was barely old enough to lift a shovel and by the time he could be put to work, his dad was doing linehaul work between Sydney and Brisbane.
“I still remember every second night being out washing the wheels with Dad before he went to Sydney,” he recalls.
“He’s still going too, now doing Brisbane to Melbourne, and he still keeps the truck immaculate.”
It would be fair to assume this was the origins of Travis’ cleaning compulsion. His dad led by example, always taking immense pride in the trucks he was driving. Even though they weren’t his, he always kept them immaculate and taught his boys that same resolve.
“We even had to make sure all the mudflaps were washed on the inside as well,” Travis laughs as he recalls how that spurned his mudflap OCD.
“Now I am all about the straight and even mudflaps, they’ve got to be straight and they’ve got to be long.”
It wasn’t just the hereditary family trait that has inspired Travis – his career path took him through a veritable treasure trove of unexpected learning institutes that have fuelled his dedication and respect for cleanliness.
“I was going to go into the police force when I finished year 12, but I had a job at Maccas and I just stayed there,” he happily admits, crediting the McDonalds training for influencing his approach.
“As a young fella they taught me a lot of good stuff. One big thing I took was ‘clean as you go’ and I have carried that through everything I did after that. Even now, when we are on job sites, we are always cleaning as we go.”
So how does a young fella with a managerial position at Maccas end up with a shed full of classic Kenworths and a yard full of spotless earthmoving gear? Easy – passion and someone else’s tax write-off.
That’s an over simplified answer, but let me elaborate. Travis’ affliction for cleaning and his eye for detail led to him starting his own mobile detailing business. His enjoyment of that job and his work ethic saw that business grow and his client base expand very quickly. One of those clients happened to have a brand-new Hino truck and Bobcat that didn’t get the use it should’ve. On one of Travis’ excursions down the back shed to dust the Bobcat down, the client made the remark that Travis looked pretty good in that.
“At the time the detailing was going well, but it was hard to teach people to have an eye for detail,” Travis confesses.
“So when he offered to sell me the Bobcat, even though I’d had no experience with it, I loved earthmoving equipment and I figured I’d give it a go.”
And so it began. Eventually, roughly six months afterwards.
“I had to go and get my tickets and stuff and I kind of left the Bobcat in the backyard,” he laughs.
“My wife eventually came to me and said ‘well are you going to do it or not?’”
Travis rang one of his other clients who did some earthmoving to see if he had any work, and the next morning Travis was behind the controls and into it. So it began.
The path from a single Bobcat to the five 14-tonne plus excavators, and more than seven eight-tonne mini excavators, as well as the handful of Bobcats and other equipment, has been an up and down affair. TKN has ebbed and flowed through the past couple of decades of fluctuating economies and landscapes. At one stage, the company had as many as 35 employees and now sits happily between 15 and 20. They have carved out a happy market looking after their loyal customers who appreciate that the TKN team don’t just take the ‘clean as you go’ approach to their trucks, but also to every job they turn up to. Really, you’re here to find out about what they are turning up to the jobs in, right? So let’s focus in on the trucks, specifically the eye-watering T909 on the pages before you.
Now I can honestly say I have never written these words before, but a big thank you for this truck has to go to the NHVR – they’re Travis’ words, not mine.
“Thank you to the NHVR,” he says. “We had been looking at getting a new truck for a while, something that could tow a float. We always towed our bigger excavators on a tag trailer and one day when we got wheeled in, they pointed out if we had an extra bucket or something on, we would really be pushing the limits. So that was kind of what pushed the idea of a truck and float over the line. So the NHVR helped me get this over the line with the wife.”
While this was all said tongue in check, Travis also took the time to point out exactly what the TKN Earthworks Group stands for.
“In my head it is Travis and Kassie Northcott Earthworks, that’s how I designed the name,” he admits.
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“But it also suits my middle name – Travis Kenden Northcott. So, I get told on the good days it’s both our business – Travis and Kassie – but on the bad days it’s just mine, Travis Kenden.”
Back to the truck. While TKN Earthworks has had several brand-new trucks before, they have been limited to the Hino and ACCO models only, and yes every one of them has been spruced up and blinged out to the highest TKN standards. The Kenworth corner of the garage however has always been passion project trucks.
A lot of this has been because of both Travis and his son Bailey’s love of old school looks, as well as a passion for the classic CAT motors. All that paired with an employee by the name of Gerald Horan, and you had the driving force behind all the Kenworth refurb projects.
“Gerald was my go-to guy for nearly a decade. He started here as a truck and dog driver, by then we were pulling engines out of trucks, gearboxes, diffs. He was all self-taught. He could do anything, such a great work ethic,” Travis recalls as he reflects on his mate.
“He’d always know if something was out of our league, he’d say ‘we’ll send that out’ – not often though.”
Having a mate like that as a staff member had Travis feeling, as he put it, ‘pretty ballsy’ when it came to buying trucks, particularly the Kenworths. Travis has a thing for the K104 models and knew with Gerald by his side they could bring life to any of Travis’ project ideas.
“We’ve now got a K104 Aerodyne in the tipper, a K104 fat cab in a prime mover, a K104B fat cab prime mover and a 404SAR in a tipper spec, actually it’s probably better if I say what we don’t have, which is a 604 and a 904 in that series,” he laughs.
Now we get to the brand new T909. This came about because Gerald decided retirement, or more like semi-retirement, was on the cards for him.
“This is the kind of bloke he is though,” Travis states.
“Gerald gave us 12 months’ notice that he was leaving. When we processed that, though, we realised we probably couldn’t do the project trucks we had been doing without him. So, the decision was made that the next truck we’d get would have to be a brand new one.”
All of this was coinciding with the advice from NHVR and the thought of moving into some bigger excavators as TKN Earthworks and demolition clients moved onto larger projects. Thus the decision was made to look at a new T909 and FWR three-axle drop deck widening float trailer.
Before you make the observation that a 50’ bunk, fully specced with dual fridges, microwave, TV, custom sound system and sleeper air is a bit of overkill for a truck – even Travis jokes it’s the ‘Tamborine to Gold Coast Express’ – you are correct. Travis himself had a bit of fun teasing his Brown and Hurley salesman about his lack of reply at times, to the point that it resulted in Travis turning up on his Yatala doorstep and buying the highway spec stock model that was sitting in the front yard.
“I was sitting there thinking this is way too big for what I need, but everyone seems to be buying these things so I might as well,” he laughs.
“It didn’t have cross locks or diff locks, but we priced it with Brown and Hurley doing that for us and bought it.”
Brown and Hurley did the major rear end changes and then handed it over to Travis to get everything else done that he wanted, with the suppliers he wanted.
“Brown and Hurley basically didn’t see it for three months,” Travis says.
“So thanks to them for allowing us to move it around and get what they needed done.”
Top of that list was sending it to Highway Lights down on the Gold Coast and getting every bit of stainless removed.
“The factory stainless is bright annealed (BA), and we got everything replaced with mirrored stainless. They also deleted the smart wheel while it was there,” he recalls.
“I’d seen a bullbar I liked at GozBar; I didn’t need a bullbar, I just got it because I like hanging all this stuff off it – stainless spotlights, that stuff. Shephard Transport Equipment did the hydraulics, chrome wheels and turn table. Ash at On Highway Electronics did the stereo system. Matt from Precision Truck Air and Stainless did the fridges, cabinets and everything in the sleeper. Sam Keddie Signs took care of all the lines and scrolls like he always does. I have also got to thank the likes of Midway Signs, Matt from Tint Focus and Sam at SJG Heavy Auto Electrics for their work.”
By the time Brown and Hurley had the truck back ready for pre-delivery, it was barely recognisable as the stock standard truck that TKN had signed up for.
“It is more than we need, to be honest,” Travis admits, but doing things by half measures is not the way TKN approaches anything, from every job they rock up to to every truck they have and to every piece of earthmoving equipment bearing the TKN logo. Attention to detail and pride is as evident as the mirror stainless adjourned on this beast of a truck.
“If Gerald was still here full-time (I should have mentioned that Gerald’s ‘semi-retirement’ involves flying down from Bowen several times a year to help and work with the TKN team), we would probably still be doing up the old girls,” Travis says.
As much as we can appreciate that, what Travis, Bailey and his family team at TKN Earthworks Group can do with a brand-new truck definitely pairs earthmoving and shiny together well.
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