Road Train
Friday, 15th August 2008 by Alex Turnbull
When Google recently added street view for vast stretches of empty road across the middle of Australia, most people didn't expect to find much of interest out there.
To be fair, those people were mostly right. However, every now and again the street view car did indeed pass something at least. In the deserts of South Australia on the Stuart Highway, we can see an approaching truck. Actually, it's a really big truck!
Hang on, is that another truck driving dangerously close behind the first one? Nope, the first massive truck is actually pulling another trailer which carries... another truck - followed by another trailer!
The sign on the back of the huge vehicle kindly explains that this is a "ROAD TRAIN" - a kind of trucking used in remote areas of Australia, the United States, and Western Canada to move huge loads across vast distances. In the U.S. and Canada the terms "triples," "Turnpike doubles" and "Rocky Mountain doubles" are more commonly used.
This particular road train is a "triple", and is also "doubled-up" (carrying empty road train trailers), but some of these vehicles pull up to 4 trailers at a time. Australia has the largest and heaviest road-legal vehicles in the world, with some weighing up to 200 tonnes.
Previously on Google Sightseeing: Trucks Pulling Trucks
Thanks to Virtual Globe Trotting
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Looks like it was deleted…
Here’s a different form of “road train” http://flickr.com/photos/leebennett/2570058855/
@Jordan – still there for me? Perhaps it just didn’t load for you?
This entry made me giggle so hard. I spent the summer of 2002 working at a camp near Fresno, CA. On a weekend off, a counselor from Australia and myself were driving down Hwy 99 to the LA area. He commented that he had not seen any trains in the states. I told him that was because we hadn’t been near tracks. He responded that no, he meant trains like a semi with 4 or 5 trailers back behind it. I was shocked! I see 3 sometimes from growing up on a rural part of I-5 but that amazed me.
Great find – these things are impressive enough in street view, but if you ever hear one start off – I don’t know how many gears are in the average road train, but they seem to be shifting forever! Then there is the sheer terror of trying to overtake one, fortunately the roads in these parts don’t have a lot of bends. You wouldn’t bother once they got up to full speed though, they really clip along!
I drove an old Toyota van around Australia a couple of times in 98/99 and if we wanted to drive at night, we’d just wait for one of these road trains to pass a rest stop and then we sneak right in behind them.
It kept us from hitting kangaroos (which is likely when driving at night in the Outback) and saved us a bit of fuel from the drafting effect. Considering how long it takes these vehicles to slow down – I didn’t think tailgating/rear ending was too likely.
They are way bigger than anything I’ve seen in North America. 4 trailers seems to be the norm there and 5 wasn’t uncommon.