Saturday Dec 21, 2024

Record-Breaking Trucks

We are accustomed to seeing HGVs and trucks rolling over the motorways and out on the roads with the world’s old familiar brands like Dentressangle and Stobart. They are consistent and constant presences out on the road. All of us know what we can expect from trucks – making their way merrily from point A to point B to deliver their loads.

However, what about those that break out from the norm? How about the truck who struck out on their own and have left their mark in the world.

I’m talking about those record-breaking Lorries.

Like the Truck Jumping a Lotus.
That kind of thing.

In the past, we definitely saw trucks being used as objects to leap. Evel Knievel used to leap uses and lorries regularly back in the good old days.

However, Mike Ryan, brazenly breaking from tradition, and a man who is known for doing strange things while in a lorry, in 2014 decided to get behind the wheel of his truck and launch it over a Lotus F1 car – leaping over 87 feet and directly into the Guinness Book of World Records.

The Record Reverser. Back Up the Truck!

Then there is Marco Hellgrewe, the German driver, who clearly thought in September 2008 that it would be great fun to see just how he could go in reverse in an HGV.

Why not?

Then he drove an HGV training Hampshire around a Bergen, Germany training forces track for five hours and 21 minutes while backing the truck up for a total of 39.7 miles.

You have to wonder how he was able to avoid going crazy from the reverse-gear beeping sound.

On the Side

In the meantime, in Austria across the border (although it happened in 2004, so a few years earlier), Johann Redl drove his Steyr 891 7420 kg truck over to the Wels Airport and steered the tuck on two wheels for over 10 miles.

I grant you, that is fairly impressive! But is it as impressive as when James Bond pulled off a truck wheelie in a fire and drove a tanker on the side in order to evade bazooka blasts?

I don’t think so.

Get onboard the road train

The country of Australia is a massive place with not a lot in the middle. Nice, but nonetheless not much.

It makes for some very straight and long road trips when headed from one side of the country to the other. The land’s bareness and scale play a major role in the country’s truck driving culture and given rise to what is called road trains.

The road train is basically a really long truck. It is comprised of multiple trailers of trucks (which are also used sometimes in the USA, Canada, and Argentina). They roll along the fairly empty and open roads of Australia’s heartland and deliver freight over the vast land.

You definitely don’t want to get stuck behind a road train. The longest road trains/trucks are comprised of over 140 wheels, 100 trailers, and stretch out up to one mile long.

Jasmine

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