They say that sometimes adversity brings opportunity. For Central Queensland transport operator Charlie Johnson, a close call with death at least gave him the chance to spec his “ultimate” bush truck...
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The lights coming at him were bright. Charlie Johnson tried to veer away but the lights seemed to have his Western Star as their target. They turned directly towards him.
Against million-to-one odds, in the early hours of the morning on a lonely Outback highway west of Emerald, in central Queensland, Charlie had encountered an out-of-control roadtrain. Its driver had just suffered a heart attack.
Charlie decided that swerving his fully-loaded cattle roadtrain down the steep dropoff off the highway would be fatal.
With nowhere else to go…he braced himself. Then heard what he reckons was the loudest sound of his life – the awful noise of two fully-laden roadtrains colliding head-on!
Incredibly, Charlie survived the wreck. Not surprisingly, the three-year-old Ferguson’s Transport Western Star 6900 was a writeoff after the impact with the fully-loaded tipper combination.
As Charlie slowly recovered – in plaster and still only semi-mobile, he and wife Justine had to make a tough decision: Whether to cut back on the trucks in the family transport business and take it a little easier….
Or whether to replace the Western Star and forge ahead.
Out of adversity, they decided to bite the bullet. Charlie and Justine Johnson ordered the truck they’d call “Heaven Only Knows.”
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