The Tanami Road turns to trucking torture

DW,
the link didn't work so if you don't mind I have posted a new one.

Tanami highway to hell

G'day, that link doesn't seem to work. Cheers, John

Hmmmm, the picture seems in conflict with the story. Perhaps a vested interest here.
Before we first travelled the Tanami in 1990 the goss said dont do it..diabolical..
truth was different..even in a leaf sprung hilux it was comfortable. Repeated the dose
in 07...word was...baaad....but it was much the same...a bit coarser at the WA end.
If that pic is the worst they can come up with I would ignore the whining....and go if
you plan to....a wonderful drive........oldbaz.

I'm sure I read somewhere that "the next time you are in a very long line of cars, remember you aren't stuck in traffic, you are traffic".
Is it a possibility that the road trains carting cattle could be part of the problem. It's usually the drive tyres on the prime mover that wear out first in any situation but a hell of a lot quicker pulling road trains over gravel roads.

Cheers
Pop

When we drove down the Tanami last September we found it alright.
It definitely wasn't the worst road we'd driven on but our Landcruiser is setup pretty well.

The roadtrains we passed were all doing about 25 - 30 kph. we only passed three or four and they all seemed to have gear for the mines.

If it's going to cost too much to truck the cattle out they might consider droving gain.
They'd have a pretty good track to push the catttle down.

Steve

we lived and worked up the Tanimi and the fuel trains used to stop at the end of the tar and spend over an hour letting down all the tyres, and even then used to worm all over the road trying to avoid the ruts, it is bad but it is what we all leave home for to seek, and again I rant about how bad roads keep away the mainstream and again I love it so really if one road in a country as big as aussie is REALLY bad then that is a really good report for Australia in general as we have one BIG country out here and it has some crap roads ..... awesome, bring em on, I can drive up it, pull over a couple of hundred klms in and camp up, no "ranger" is gunna bail me up and kick me out, no "idiot" screaming past at midnight and I will not hear another car until 10am the next morning...............
Might go dig some more holes in the road hahahah
Cheers
Joe

"The project for sealing works for 2012-13 will be tendered shortly for sealing between chainages 217km and 221km. Once awarded the works will take between 4-6 months to complete." 4-6 months to seal 4-5 km of road?! Please tell me that is a typo!


BTW, here's what it looked like on 25 May 2008, somewhere between Tanami Mine and Rabbit Flat:

If the truckers are damaging their vehicles on this track would it be a cheaper option to drag a sled of some kind behind to knock the tops off the corrugations. If there are many trucking movements on this track then maybe tow it for a 100 kms then pass it on.
If this was dragged up and down the track a few times wouldn't it flatten out the track somewhat to be beneficial to the truckers as the extra fuel for a 100 kms would outweigh the cost of vehicle damage and increase the average speed also.

Maybe this would work in theory but might not in the real world so I thought put it out there and see what is discussed.

I'm only asking a question.

Cheers
Mal

I'll be doing this in August after our South to North journey on the CSR.

I'd say this woulld be pretty ordinary if towing a caravan BUT I'm in a well set up Prado, and it can't be much worse than the PDR in Cape York that I did last year...in fact the photo in this thread looks almost the same.

Right tyre pressure, right speed and you'll be fine (oh and tighten everything up along the way)