This episode of Classic Restos is about a man, his son, and their family Mack truck.
It all started when a former NSW Highway Patrol officer Roger Preston left the force in 1974 and went out on a limb buying his first Mack Truck, an R600, with a 237hp Maxidyne engine, 10-speed gearbox, and 36' Fruehauf Tri-Axle trailer.
Roger started carrying freight from Sydney to Mt Isa, then onto Darwin. But when cyclone Tracey hit Darwin on Christmas Eve in 1974, it changed everything. The demand for freight services increased dramatically to assist with the rebuild of Darwin. Roger Preston's business expanded to meet the demand. He purchased a new Mack R700 V8 Thermodyne in 1976 with a 12-speed gearbox and massive pulling capacity; this was a class above everything at the time and a great workhorse.
About six years ago, at a meeting with some of Rogers industry friends, they asked whatever happened to the R700. A two-year intensive search began using all their industry contacts. They had almost gave-up hope when a call came out of the blue, saying the R700 was at Alpha, west of Rockhampton, on a property and not in great condition.
Roger with his son Rod travelled to Alpha to check it out, only to find that it had been sold to a restorer. All was not lost; they chased done the restorer and befriended him, and took on the project of restoring the R700 to its former glory.
Four years later, son Rod suggested to his father that he needed some help on a job in Queensland, a stop off at the Mack dealer workshop, and the fully restored R700 was revealed. The R700 is now back home with the original owner, Rod had purchased the restored truck to keep it in the family as a legacy of his father's work in transport.
A great story with plenty of outback stories of an era long past. Roger Preston was inducted into the National Transport Hall of Fame in 2017 and inscribed with the 'Roger is always happiest when he had to be somewhere else', sums him up beautifully.
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