Deals on Wheels #469

New DEALS
It all started with the company once known
as Mercedes-Benz Australia (MBA) and,
critically, a handful of senior executives who
saw immense potential for a new breed of
US conventional suitably tailored to local
conditions.
Ironically, the gap in the market left by
White’s departure would be one of many
motivations for MBA’s interest in Freightliner,
but no motivation was greater than the desire
to simply add a North American conventional
to its entrenched range of Mercedes-Benz
cab-overs.
Choosing the right Freightliner model was
no straightforward task, though. Nor would it
be a quick decision by the various executive
voices within MBA, led largely, and somewhat
forcefully, by the late Ian Bruce, who would
become rightfully regarded by many as the
‘Father of Freightliner in Australia’.
Understandably, the excitement within
MBA’s Mulgrave (Vic) headquarters after
Daimler-Benz’s 1981 purchase of Freightliner
was almost palpable. Consequently, it wasn’t
long before a small group from Mulgrave’s
upper echelons boarded a plane bound for
Freightliner HQ in Portland, Oregon.
It’s worth noting at this point that
Freightliner had a well-deserved reputation
for innovative engineering. The brand was
founded in 1942 and its founder, Leland
James, was a prominent US fleet owner who
apparently viewed truck development as a
somewhat natural fit for greater productivity
in a road transport fleet.
In the late ‘50s, for example, the brand was
first to develop a cab-over able to tilt through
a full 90 degrees and was an even earlier
adopter of aluminium in cab construction.
Ironically, though, from the ‘50s into the
‘70s, Freightliners were sold in the US through
the White network, even bearing a ‘White
Freightliner’ badge, until White hit hard times
and necessity drove Freightliner to assemble
its own sales and service outlets.
Freightliner’s long list of innovative
achievements definitely wasn’t lost on the
ambitious Australian group, who headed to
Portland to not only search for a conventional
contender, but also appraise Freightliner’s
willingness to satisfy a right-hand drive
market for the first time.
It wasn’t long before a possible candidate
was found in the form of an FLC120 model
and, with excitement and conviction in
abundance, MBA ordered two trucks for
extensive testing in Australian conditions.
The pair of aluminium FLC120s (120-inch
[304.8cm] bumper to back-of-cab) were said
to be the first right-hand drive units built
in Freightliner’s Portland factory and, by
mid-1982, they’d landed in Australia for what
would develop into a long and arduous
test regime.
While these events were supposedly
unfolding with a high degree of secrecy,
excitement in the MBA camp was difficult to
contain. Even Bruce’s usual caution started
to wilt and it’s still easy to recall a quiet but
intensely deliberate discussion during a visit
to Mulgrave in the early ‘80s.
Quizzed about Freightliner’s potential for
Australia, an anxious ‘Brucey’ first sought
repeated assurances that confidentiality
would be respected before eventually leading
the way to a nondescript building where one
of the two ‘secret’ FLC120s was undergoing
engineering evaluation.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked after
a few minutes and, if memory serves me
right, the initial response was along the
lines of: “It’ll be interesting to see how that
aluminium cab and all those pop rivets
stand up to our conditions.”
He immediately agreed, explaining that
the other unit was already undergoing hard
tests. Indeed it was, first at the Monegeeta
(Vic) military proving grounds and, later,
severe on-road tests around Wilcannia in
far western NSW.
Requests to drive one of the trucks were
met with polite but definite refusal. In fact,
it would take almost 40 years before the
opportunity to drive one of those two trucks
presented itself and, as fate would have it, just
a few hundred kilometres west of Wilcannia.
Meanwhile, ongoing US developments
were giving the Mulgrave mob plenty of
other things to think about beyond the two
trucks being tested here. Under Daimler’s
In a wise move, Australia’s
first Freightliner was the
highly durable FLC112
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