Mariner

Yes Paul, definitely not many others about over here apart from the army transport version. Basically a heavy duty versions of highway units. The main difference I noticed was the triple skin chassis, long wheel base and overwidth track (needed a permit/escort for highway) and of course the big Rad and steel snout. Everything beefed up for off road haulage at double that of allowable highway bogie loading (here anyway). I remember we also had a heavy float that dropped onto the log bolster for moving the madill long line cable loggers, dozers and excavators. Fred

I’d be interested to know what powered those Sri Lankan dumpers, the snout/guards are shorter than the TBs we had.

Hi I just came across this and would like to share that I started out my mechanic life working on this very fleet in the early 80s including No3 shown pic. They were also further modified in our workshops to cope with the harsh conditions of the Florentine valley in Tassie and constant operation at maximum and beyond load capacities. Cabs were reinforced to reduce cracking, bogie springs replaced with solid walking beams, stools plated inside. Shipped transmission replaced with 5 speed main and 4 speed Joey box. The standard chassis was unmodified triple channel. The 375hp V8s were strong although turbos were a regular casualty due to being run glowing hot over one particular hill pass called “the gap” along with the odd broken axle. A misguided engineer replaced the air over hydraulic drum brakes with full air disk brakes which was a bad move as the exposed rotors and pads got minced by dust, slush and rocks. We would be constantly changing pads where linings tore off backing plates . These things really had a tough life with typical loads around 70 ton, but not unusual to see 70-100 ton loads. The trailers were also customised with the standard pole (draw bar) replaced by hardwood logs fitted using chainsaw carpentry. They were definitely a beast of a truck and my time at the Maydena workshops and “Mack Shop” with the rest of the crew were some of the best of my working life. - Cheers Fred