Talkin’ truckin’ with the truckers themselves

Just as we here at Hemmings take pride in the Hemmings Nation of readers, commenters and contributors, our friends across the pond over at BigLorryBlog take equal pride in their Anorak Army of readers and contributors, many of whom actually had seat time in the trucks, lorries, utes, semis and buses that the blog covers.

And many of them have contributed some of the most interesting vintage material at the blog in recent weeks, from the pics that Gary Richards sent in of the Australian White coach-buses (including the above photo) to the follow-up photos sent in by Martin Phippard of a similar Marmon coach-bus used for an overland Damascus-to-Baghdad route in the 1930s. Jerry Burley and Mack Mackay sent in some photos of some unusual snow-blowers and the rigs that pushed them, while Graham Kircher sent in a photo of what they believe to be the world’s smallest fire engine.

While most of their readers are, obviously, British and concerned with British trucking (such as Les Freathy and his Scammell), they do on occasion cover American trucks – or, in the parlance, “Yankee Clippers” (such as Jimmie and his GMC crackerbox) – and Australian trucks (such as Cam and his photos from the Allora Truck and Tractor Show).

Even better, the readership sheds plenty of light on pretty much any mystery truck Brian posts to the blog. In fact, I’ve yet to see them totally stumped. Perhaps we should set up a mystery vehicle competition between Hemmings Nation and the Anorak Army sometime?