ROAD TRAINS
A road train consists of a relatively conventional truck chassis, cab, and engine unit, but instead of pulling a single trailer the road train pulls a succession of them, providing massive carrying capacity. The Australian "road train" is the longest truck in the world; they have 3 or more trailers and are up to 53 metres long, and haul up to 115 tonnes each. Road trains are unwieldy, and pulling and maneuvering them safely is only possible because of the lack of traffic on Australia's outback roads, and the terrain's flatness. The multiple trailers are detached and connected individually to multiple trucks when the road train gets close to populated areas.
In 1999 the town of Merredin, Western Australia made it into the Guinness Book of Records, when Marleys Transport made a successful attempt on the record for the world's longest road train. The record was created when 45 trailers, driven by Greg Marley, weighing 603 metric tons and measuring 610 metres were pulled by a Kenworth truck for 8 km.
In 2003, the record was surpassed near Mungindi, New South Wales, by a road train consisting of 87 trailers and a single prime mover (measuring 1235 metres in length).
The next record was 1,442 metres, set by a driver in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in a Kenworth owned by Doug Gould. In 2006, a truck with 104 semi-trailers (at a length of 1,474.3 metres) claimed a new record at Clifton, Queensland.
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