“I just woke up one morning and had the urge to drive fast trucks! I have got tip trucks, and so forth, and I just thought I would try something different.”
Having that urge back in 2015 has led Rob Fern, from Silvan, Victoria, to now be the lead pilot in the #23 Volvo-White Super Truck which competes in the Hi-Tec Oils Australian Super Truck Nationals.
Rob and his MLC Racing team were braving the chilly north-east Victorian weather for round two of the series recently, with Rob’s sons Lachlan and Riley also hitting the track in the light truck racing category.
The Volvo-White is the only one of its type in the Australian Championship, battling out on the track against a number of Kenworths, Macks and Isuzus.
European built, the truck had been through the hands of a few different owners, claiming the Australian Championship multiple times before coming into Rob’s possession.
Under the bonnet sits a twin-turbo Cummins Big Cam III which has been set to around 1400 horsepower, coupled with an Allison HD750 automatic transmission.
Having not been involved in other categories of motorsport such as car or bike racing prior to buying his race truck, Rob had a steep learning curve.
“About all I could do was get in it and drive it. The previous owner had de-tuned the engine when I bought it, which was pretty helpful.
“At the start it was just a matter of following the other guys around the track, watching and learning and we slowly bought the fuel back on and increased the horsepower,” he said.
“I got some advice from some of the other competitors and away we went learning how to handle it. I don’t use the brakes a lot, I am not a brake wearer as such normally, and that didn’t help me as the faster I got the more I flew off the track on the corners as I wasn’t using them.
“That goes against everything I normally do. The truck is extremely hard on brakes to the point they are glowing red but it’s the only way to get six tonne around a 90-degree corner.”
Image: David Vile
Also working against Rob to some extent was the fact that the Volvo-White is the only left-hand drive truck in the field, and sitting on the opposite side of the cabin was initially an issue, especially on tracks such as Winton which predominantly feature right-hand corners.
“One of the other blokes came up to me and said, ‘you have no idea where the truck is on the track; you’re leaving us a metre (width) and we will take it’. I had to really concentrate on keeping it tight on the corners.”
Working on his race craft and building its competitiveness started to bear fruit, sealing second place in the championship in 2019. Around this time Rob’s son Lachlan also hit the track, initially piloting an Isuzu in the light truck category, and also moving across to the Volvo-White in the teams racing category.
“Lachlan got into that when he was 16 but he soon went quite well with it. The Isuzu still had a manual box. He would jump out of the right-hand drive Isuzu with a six-speed manual into the left-hand drive auto super truck and he just picked it up, driving it really well.
“My other son Riley was about 19 when he thought he might like a go, so he went really well also and came third in the teams championship last year, so he has got the hang of it pretty good too.”
The race truck and all the equipment is hauled to the track by an International Transtar which also has an on-board workshop. Once the chequered flag drops all the competing teams help each other out to keep their trucks circulating out on the track.
“If someone is broken down, we make sure they are out there for the next race,” Rob said. “It’s all hands-on deck with tools and so on. We have a pretty decent on-board workshop with the Transtar, so everybody comes and helps themselves, if someone is here at night they come and help themselves and lock it up when they’re finished.”
Back home at the MLC HQ there are a couple of new trucks in the works to help both Lachlan and Riley along and also bolster the numbers in the championship.
“We wanted to build Lachlan a super truck and we are in the middle of that now. It’s an International Eagle which will have a Detroit in it, and we are looking at replacing the Isuzu with a smaller International S-Line 4300 we have bought out of America. We are going to put a 6.7-litre Cummins in it which we will run in the light truck series.”
The recent trip to Winton was a successful one, with Rob taking out third and Lachlan fifth overall. The big bangers will return to Winton Raceway later again this year, and no doubt the MLC crew will be in the thick of the action.
And finally, for those who may be wondering what ‘MLC’ refers to, Rob Fern replied with a smile: “Midlife crisis….my wife came up with that.”