In mid-April, nearly 180,000 people flocked to Hamilton to see the Australian V8 Supercars race for 400 km over three days. While not all the cars made it to the finish line, they all made another race to the track and back, thanks to the timely haulage of Hooker Pacific.
The V8 Supercar race was a titanic battle between General Motors’ Holdens and Ford’s Falcons. Eventually the Holdens won the day with the Toll HRT team driver Garth Tander taking the chequered flag.
But before this race even began, another race had to be run involving a chartered 747 and a fleet of Hooker Pacific trucks. Race car freight forward specialists Gibson Freight in Sydney handled the charter of an Atlas 747 to bring all the teams from their home bases in Melbourne and Brisbane.
According to event director, Steve Vuleta of CSM Ltd, it was a time-critical exercise. “We needed a transport operator who had a fleet of trucks to handle the job, and could be flexible as charter aircraft don’t always fly to timetables,” says Steve. “We could only judge when the planes were arriving from the phone call we received from Gibsons saying the planes had taken off from Melbourne or Brisbane.”
Multiple trucks country-wide
To rendezvous with the car-laden 747 at Auckland airport, Hooker Pacific’s Brian Jacobs helped coordinate 10 trucks from its New Plymouth, Wanganui, Napier and Hawera branches. The fleet was a mixture of 46-foot quads, 43-foot flat decks, truck and trailer units, and a couple of B-Trains,
says Brian.
“There were 32 cars in total, including the safety car and the course car, along with all their accessories,” explains Brian. “Time became a critical factor as there was only an estimated 11 hours between the arrival of the first 747 from Melbourne and the next from Brisbane.”
This meant a quick unloading of the cars from the plane and onto the trucks for the one-and-a-half-hour drive to the race track in Hamilton. The cars were then unloaded so the trucks could head back to Auckland to meet up with the 747 coming in from Brisbane.
“We couldn’t afford to have the planes sitting on the tarmac as that costs money,” says Steve. “We needed to get them off the plane and on the trucks as soon as possible so the plane could fly back to Australia.”
Million-dollar cars
In addition to the time factor, safe and careful handling of the race cars – each valued at approximately A$1 million – was also of paramount importance. “When the V8s were sent to Bahrain to race, one of the transport trucks crashed and damaged four cars – that is something we simply can’t afford to happen,” explains Steve. “With Hookers we had zero damage to the vehicles.”
For loading onto the planes and then the flat bed trucks, two cars are stacked one on top of each other in a metal rack. They stay in this configuration for the flight and transport to the track where the racks are split and the cars can be driven off. Each car is accompanied by a 23 cubic metre accessories box containing tools and spare parts for the car.
As each driver was given a three-day pass to the event as a thank you, it turned out to be an awesome experience, says Brian. “I was lucky enough to be offered a grid walk before the final race,” he reveals. “This is open to a select few who are able to walk among the cars as they sit in their grid positions minutes before they start their final race.”
For Brian, it was a close as he would ever get to Garth Tander, his favourite driver and pick to win the gruelling 400 km
street race.
For further information on Hooker Pacific, visit www.hookers.co.nz |
