Karam Petrus's UD Quon is perfect for metropolitan sideloader work.
Karam Petrus had been driving trucks for more than five years when he decided to try his hand at becoming an owner-driver.
In February last year he paid $115,000 for a 2008 UD Quon GW470 prime mover when it had just over 400,000km on the clock. It’s now notched up 550,000km.
And Karam – a sideloader specialist based in Sydney – couldn’t be happier with his investment.
“Mate it’s an awesome truck, honestly,” he declares — and perfect for tight metro sideloader container work in and out of a lot of driveways, often on the blind side.
“The windows help heaps with the sideloader, there’s a lot of glass around, including the back window. With that back window you can see almost as well is in a car.
“The turning circle on it is amazing, it’s unreal,” he adds.
The air conditioning is “brilliant”, the cab is nice and quiet and the truck is easy to get in and out of.
“I’ve had people jump in here and say ‘this is a joke, you’ve got the life here’,” Karam says.
The UD Quon has custom lights on the deck plate and along the aero kit, among many other additions including a big subwoofer speaker.
“Doing a lot of work in the Sydney metropolitan area, I need the good tunes,” Karam says.
He says the relatively light 8.5-tonne tare weight combined with the 470hp (350kW) engine makes for good fuel-efficiency, with the unit getting about 2.2km to the litre.
The truck pulls all sizes of container ranging from 10-foot to 48-foot (3m to 14.6m) rail boxes — possible only because of the relatively small cab — and holding all sorts of goods ranging from general to dangerous goods to refrigerated food.
It has 2,250Nm of torque, Hendrickson air bag suspension, and the cab itself rides on four bags, which make for a “lot smoother” ride than the American trucks Karam has driven.
There may not be many Japanese trucks with an 18-speed Road Ranger in them, but Karam prefers the UD’s manual, which he says helps with the relatively small engine.
When asked why he thinks there are so many Quons doing container work around Australia’s ports, Karam sums up: “Reliability, efficiency and they’re economical”.
You can read the full story on Karam Petrus’s UD Quon in the June edition of Owner//Driver magazine.
Photography: Steve Skinner