World’s Longest Trucks – The Australian Road Trains
There are some pretty amazing things down under and these Australian road trains are no exception. The road trains are pretty much restricted to the Australian outback regions, banned on most of the populated roads in the southern and eastern states. Which makes sense because these trucks would be a mess to try and drive through any type of large city. The Northern Territory, northern Western Australia and Queensland’s Outback regions rely heavily on these road trains for transporting everything from fuel to cattle. We all know what the normal/standard semi trucks look like but if you attach another articulated trailer that gives you a B-double, and with two articulation points you get a B-triple. An actual road train will have two or three of the normal trailers that are connected by converter dollies. That combination is somewhere between 36.5 and 50 meters long. If the trucker has a special permit he can also run what is known as an A-B quad. So to re-cap, that’s two normal full length trailers attached to the rear of a B-double, which brings the full length of the road train to 53.5 meters. That’s the maximum allowable on most of the normal roads, but there are many, many private roads and mining roads in Outback Australia where you will find WAY longer rigs. After this check out the amazingness of the Mach Loop.These are just a few videos of the Australian road trains, there are TONS more out there if you go looking.