80. Five hours as a truckie in Kazakhstan – Dick Smith

Saturday 1 September 2007

So far during our world trip we have seen huge trucks passing us.  In the USA they tended to be brand new with sparkling chrome and obviously worth close to a million dollars, while in Russia some of the old trucks on the Ural Mountains were very decrepit, but seemed to be able to get along nevertheless. 

As I drove past these trucks I used to think, “What would it be like to be in one of those trucks?  That would be hard going.”  Well, I was about to find out.

Dick and the truck driver inside the hot cabin

It appears that I had to travel in the truck because I had the paperwork for the Earthroamer in case we were stopped.  I climbed in and sat between the driver and his assistant.  The truck was an old Ural brand, made in Russia.  I would say it was between 20 and 30 years old and not in very good condition.  It had a huge crash gearbox and I was jammed in with my feet on the engine.  This was not only incredibly noisy, but as the temperature increased during the day, it got hotter and hotter.  I would say it was about 80 degrees to 85 degrees outside, but well over the century inside the truck.

The truck driver spent most of his time with only one hand on the wheel.  Considering it was a manual drive truck without power steering, this is quite incredible.  Most of the rest of the time, he was either texting with his hand-held telephone, eating nuts out of a bag, or drinking water from a plastic bottle.  The rubbish was thrown out of the window when he had finished. 

At least he didn’t smoke, but his assistant did.  So as well as the stifling heat, the cabin was filled with the pungent odour of some famous Kazakhi tobacco.  This was a real experience.

As we departed the site where we had been for the last two nights, we climbed up the hill with the Earthroamer on the back, doing a maximum speed of about 10 kilometres per hour.  In fact, we were going so slowly that 5 minutes after departure, Pip was standing on the road hitch-hiking and thought we must have stopped as the vehicle was still in sight! 

This truck was incredibly heavy, not very powerful and very slow going up hills.  Going down the other side it was different – we would go up to 60 kilometres per hour.

There was no synchromesh in the gearbox so it was basically crash, crash, all the time.  In fact, as we would climb a hill in second gear, if there was not enough power (and this was often) the driver would stop the truck completely, holding it on the air brakes, then put it into first gear and start off again.  Now that was a jolt.  I would look back to see if the Earthroamer was about to fall off.  Fortunately we had held the Earthroamer on with the electric winch, having pulled the nose of the vehicle against a rubber tyre.  We also had a few straps, and the vehicle was in “park” with the handbrake on.

Fortunately, the truck had so much weight (I would say 20 to 25 tonnes) that the 7 tonnes of the Earthroamer was relatively small in comparison, and because of the inertia it didn’t seem to move around too much.

Well, I was about to have one of the best five hour experiences in all my life – to see what it was like to be a Kazakhi truckie.  After 2½ hours we pulled in at a truck stop and the driver and his assistant invited me in for a meal.  We had kebabs and some type of dumpling.  I brought in some watermelon from the Earthroamer fridge and that was good to have.  A group of Policemen arrived, so we shared the watermelon with them.

When we stopped for lunch I got the hand-held GPS from the Eathroamer and sat it on the dashboard of the truck.  This could have been a mistake, because from this point on, the truck driver seemed to want to get the kilometres per hour reading as high as possible.  I should mention that his own speedo had failed, so he had no idea what speed he was going.  Going up the hills we were doing about 10 kph, but going down the other side at one stage we even saw 77 kph!  It was an incredible speed for such a huge contraption that I was riding in.

We had a problem.  There were about eight bridges to get under and they had all been marked at 4.5 metres.  We knew the Earthroamer was 3.3 metres tall, and it was on the truck at about 1.2 metres, so this was going to be difficult.

In fact, the first three bridges were OK – they were obviously well higher than the 4.5 metres stated on the sign.  At the second last bridge we slowed down and the Earthroamer only cleared by about 150 mm – yes, that’s 6”.  We sure were lucky.  I have a feeling that the slightly higher truck of the night before wouldn’t have got through – and it would have been a terrifying experience at night anyhow.

As we got into Almaty itself, I was concerned that our high contraption would hit the power lines of the trolleybuses – luckily we just got under those.

Eventually, after five hours of an extraordinary experience, we could see Pip and Alexey waving us down.  Here we were, five days later, back where we had started from!  However it was a great experience living the life of a Kazakhi truck driver – even for a short time.

By the way, I forgot to mention that there was magnificent scenery along the way.  I could have been in Australia between Bourke and Broken Hill.  I really enjoyed the journey.

Click here for the next day – the Earthroamer under repair.

Click here to return to the Smith’s Overland main index page.