Outback Truckers

Outback Truckers
Genre	Factual television
Country of origin	Australia
Original language	English
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	57 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer	Prospero Productions
Running time	44 minutes
Original release
Network	7mate
Release	20 October 2014 (2014-10-20) – Present
Related
Ice Road Truckers

Outback Truckers is an Australian factual television series which looks at the Australian road-transport industry. It focuses on selected drivers and interesting personalities and shows the problems tackled by some sectors. It originally screened on the Seven Network in 2012 and currently airs on 7mate. It has aired around the world on networks such as Quest TV (UK) and Discovery Europe. Season 6 is due to air in Australia 2018.

Cast

• Anthony Haigh, Murranji Water Drilling
• Ashleigh Mackay & Robbie Mackay & Shane Burgess, Mackay and Sons House Removals and Demolition, Narangba, Queensland, Australia
• Belinda Riehl (Season 3)
• Bob Fraser (Season 3)
• Brett Robin (Season 2)
• Carl Andrews (Season 3)
• Chris Ferris (Season 3)
• Christian Reynolds (Season 2)
• Clare Bolitho (Season 1-2)
• Corey Chapman (Season 2)
• Damo Callan (Season 1)
• Danyelle Haigh, Murranji Water Drilling
• Darrell Wright (Season 3)
• Dave "Macka" McCready (Season 2 - 3)
• Deb Drew (Season 1)
• Dion Fisher (Season 2)
• Dougal Brett (Season 1)
• Emily Brett (Season 1)
• Ewan Stephens (Season 2 - 3)
• Glenn "Yogi" Kendall, Kendall Trucking (Season 2 - 3)
• Glen Waters (Season 2)
• Gordo Evans (Season 1-2)
• Greg Wise (Season 3)
• Heather Jones (Season 2)
• Jared Baldwin (Season 3)
• Jason Ackeroyd (Season 3)
• Jeff Elliot
• Jeff "Bluezy" Barrow (Season 2)
• Joey Granich (Season 2)
• Jonathan Rayner (Season 3)
• Katie Howell (Season 2)
• Kaye Ferris (Season 3)
• Larry Brewer (Season 3)
• Mark Bolitho (Season 1-2)
• Mark Cromwell - RJE Global Pty Ltd (Season 2 - 3)
• Mark King (Season 1)
• Matt Adams (Season 3)
• Matt Riches (Season 1-2)
• Mike Hoath - RJE Global Pty Ltd
• Noelene Turner (Season 2)
• Paul 'Sludge' Andrews - Paul Andrews Transport (Season 3)
• Peter "Turbo" Teatoff (Season 2 - 3)
• Rosco Haining (Season 3)
• Russell McDonough (Season 2)
• Sharon Collins (Season 2 - 3)
• Shui Evans (Season 1-2)
• Simon Page (Season 3)
• Sonya Wise (Season 3)
• Steve Grahame, Western Australia (Season 1 - 3)
• Steve Hughes (Season 1)
• Wayne Haigh, Murranji Water Drilling

In July 2017 one of the cast members, Sonya Wise, passed away. Sonya and her husband, Greg, featured in season 3 of Outback Truckers. Outback Truckers Noelene Turner passed away in 2014. She left behind her Outback Trucking husband Bluesy.

Reception

Outback Truckers was favourably reviewed by the press. Melinda Houston from The Sydney Morning Herald's 'Critics Choice' noted that "they're great stories well told from a part of the country and a way of life most of us will never otherwise experience". It was also praised in The West Australian for its various close ties with Western Australia. News Limited's 'Switch On' gave it a 4/5 rating, one of the week's highest scores.

Viewers

Season 1 (2014)

No.	Multichannel Ranking (Australia)	Original air	Australian viewers
1	< 20	20 October 2012	≤ 149,000
2	5	27 October 2012	187,000
3	4	3 November 2012	220,000
4	16	10 November 2012	162,000
5	< 20	17 November 2012	≤ 160,000

International broadcasting

The following table lists the countries in which Outback Truckers airs outside Australia.

Country	Network(s)/Station(s)
Australia (origin)	7mate
United Kingdom	Quest
New Zealand	TVNZ 1
Netherlands	Discovery Channel
Norway	Discovery Channel
Poland	Discovery Channel
Czech Republic	Discovery Channel
Lithuania	Discovery Channel
Germany	DMAX (TV channel)
Italy	DMAX
Spain	DMAX
United States	Netflix

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired		DVD release	DVD features
			Season premiere	Season finale	Region 4	Note
	1	5	18 October 2012	17 November 2012	13 August 2014	2 Discs Running time: 260 minutes
	2	13	06 February 2014	30 June 2014	13 August 2014	4 Discs Running time: 572 minutes
	3	13	13 March 2015	15 May 2015	12 August 2015	4 Discs Running time: 580 minutes
	4	13	06 May 2016	26 July 2016	17 August 2016	4 Discs Running time: 576 minutes
	4	13	16 May 2017	08 August 2017	23 August 2017	4 Discs Running time: 572 minutes
	4	13	08 May 2018

Episodes

Season 1 (2014)

No.	Title	Original air date
1	"Episode 1"	20 October 2014 (2014-10-20)
Richo owns a fleet of monster trucks and all the problems that go with them. He’s got to get his convoy half way across the Australian continent to the middle of the desert. Clare and Mark are a trucking couple who complete one of the longest cross country supply runs in the world. Every six weeks they drive as many kilometres as the circumference of the Earth. The distance they can handle, crazy motorists drive them mad and driving level crossings under lights and 10 km above the speed limit. Gordon and Shui run road-trains to mining outposts in Australia’s remote north. Working around the clock, beating fire and floods. Teeming summer rain is already playing havoc with the schedule of long distance truckie, Mark Bolitho, as he prepares for a marathon five-day trek across the Australian continent. It’s been a good run so far but there are signs of trouble up ahead. A severe thunderstorm with hail, gale force winds and flash flooding hits the truck. On the edge of the Central Australian desert, Richo’s convoy prepare to hit the dirt roads. It’s going to be a tough ride for his most trusted driver, "Yeti". Up north on the coast road, Shui’s losing patience with a slower road train but overtaking in these elongated rigs is a tricky operation. And it’s not helped by two fellow truckies tying up the CB radio. For Richo’s convoy, rains have closed several roads. Yeti’s truck is in the lead but it’s been badly shaken up. Clare and Mark are about to hit the endless straight of the Nullarbor Plain. No corners to worry about, just cars that don’t understand trucks. Richo decides he’ll stay at the small town of Warburton with part of his convoy and send two trucks of perishable goods to see if they can get through. It’s not long before conditions start to deteriorate. Patches of water suddenly become lakes of unknown depth. He’s only 21 but Yeti is already a veteran of the deepwater crossing. The trucks make it through, but they’ve taken a hammering. Time to give the boss back at Warburton some more bad news. Yeti will have to sit tight, camp out while Richo organises a replacement truck. The breakdown has already cost them precious time and with freezers packed with cold goods, sitting around in 40 degree heat isn’t an option. Yeti’s makes it to his destination. The unload is going smoothly until the shopkeeper notices something isn’t right – the truck’s freezers have not been working. Two hundred kilometres down the road, melting ice cream is the last of Richo’s problems. He has a $3000 a day crane parked and idle. He needs to get it back to its owner before it sends him broke.
2	"Episode 2"	27 October 2014 (2014-10-27)
In Perth lone trucking operator Steve Grahame is preparing for an epic journey. A 3000-kilometre trek to the top of Western Australia. Steve’s a veteran driver with a reputation for getting trucks and goods into places no one else can. Deb Drew’s got herself a new career. In her previous life she was a model a mother and a business woman. Now she’s a truck driver. She and driving partner Damo are about to set off on a trip to the dead centre of Australia, when they get a late change to their destination. They now need to head to Darwin adding three thousand kilometres to their journey and two days in the driving seat Steve Grahame has been driving for two days. His old engine has had a bad oil leak for the entire trip. If it’s as bad as Steve suspects the engine could explode and the whole trip go up in smoke In Perth Mark Bolitho is getting his rig ready for another 7000 kilometre cross continent trip to Melbourne and back. Riding alongside on the trip will be mark’s driving partner, Clare and their dog, Roy, who never misses a trip. Deb’s having trouble with the gears on her truck. She’s not used to a manual. With a further delay they are now starting 5 hours late really putting the pressure on. Then on the outskirts of Melbourne, the boss calls. On a mountainside Steve's road train is giving him all the wrong signals. His road train is fighting a mountain and the mountain is winning. If the hill wins and the truck stops, he’s got a whole new battle on his hands. Clare and Mark’s road train hits the edge of the vast Nullarbor Plain. Also on the road are two oversize trucks carrying mining equipment. Getting past them in a road train is going to be tricky. Steve’s road train is stuck on the side of a hill. He was only a few metres from making it over the crest but now he’s got the back-breaking job of uncoupling the trailers and pulling them over the top one by one. Mark and Clare have swapped drivers but while they were stopped, they were passed by the same wide load they overtook earlier. Clare’s flying blind, relying on someone else’s judgement on how safe it is to overtake. Turns out it’s not safe at all. The light is just starting to go when Steve crosses the Barnett River. It’s recently been in flood and there’s heavy sand on the riverbed that traps Steve’s truck. The fix could be as simple as shovelling some of the sand away. He can’t leave the truck straddling the river over night. There’s time for one last try. If this fails he’s in serious trouble. On the edge of the Central Australian desert Deb’s worried about the number of animals she’s passing on the roadside. No cattle but plenty of sheep close to the road and three that decide they want to cross in front of her. Back on the highway Mark and Clare have two problems – Roy’s playing up and the wide load they’ve passed twice already has passed them again. Last time Clare was called through there was a truck coming, this time they find another way to annoy her. Steve is tantalizingly close to his destination—only a hundred kilometres away. But he’s still not confident to push his truck through on the muddy track. To make matters worse he has a slow-leaking tyre that he has to change. The community he’s supplying is so close that reinforcements arrive. It’s a long shot but maybe four-wheel drives can pull him free. Steve is eventually out but soon he hits another bog. As a last-ditch attempt, a grader is sent to try to pull him through. It’s a dangerous job and it’s Steve’s last hope.
3	"Episode 3"	3 November 2014 (2014-11-03)
Mark King is a heavy haulage specialist that has to haul a monster rig to a coal mine 700 kilometres away. It's too big for the road and there’s a mountain range to cross. In the wilds of north Western Australia, veteran truckie Steve Grahame is in the middle of an epic journey, trying to deliver essential supplies to a remote community, but the weather and roads are conspiring against him. In the central Australian desert on the road to Alice Springs, ex-model turned truckie Deb Drew is into the fourth day of a 7000-kilometre trek from Melbourne to Darwin and back. Steve Grahame has been trying for more than a week to get his road train into Kalumburu and he’s stuck just 70 kilometres from his destination. But on these tracks travelling 100 metres can take more than a day. The whole community is relying on Steve to make it through. He’s carrying critical building supplies and food to fill the empty shelves of the local store. Mark King is a man with a mission – to get an eight-and-a-half-meter-wide, 100-tonne mining dump truck from Brisbane to the booming coalfields of Rollestone. Problem is he has to navigate the monster rig through Toowoomba’s great dividing range. To add more pressure to an already impossible deadline the convoy can only travel through the city at night. Deb’s got a plan to mix a little pleasure with the business of driving and make an unscheduled stop at a place she’s always wanted to see, Uluru (Ayers Rock). But Deb has spotted a problem with one of her trailers and gets some unwanted attention from the law. Steve Grahame’s road train has been stranded at a remote cattle station. Persistent rain has been filling up a bog hole that he needs to get through. Graders have been working at the hole and the sun has dried it out, to the point where Steve’s ready to risk running his road train at it. There’s no way he can turn his road train around out here so his decision is crucial, turn left and take on the bog hole, turn right and try a longer way. In the small hours of the morning Mark King’s oversize load has hit a roadblock. No one told him about a new road surface being laid on the highway by a machine that’s taking up the two lanes he needs to get by. There’s a stand off between the road crew and Mark’s crew. The delay is costing them precious time. If they’re not out of the city by sun-up they break the curfew, and the police could order them to stop, leaving the rig stranded.
4	"Episode 4"	10 November 2014 (2014-11-10)
Dougal Brett is one unusual truckie, he flies his own helicopter, owns a cattle station the size of a small country and a fleet of livestock trucks. His road trains have to haul 1500 cattle to a market nearly 3000 kilometres away. He’s depending on the sale of his cattle to pay bills that have been piling up since the previous season when a live-export ban crippled the market. But the dirt tracks off his remote station are wet and getting wetter. Heavy haulage driver, Mark King is half-way through a marathon job. He’s in charge of getting a monster mining truck from Brisbane to the central Queensland coal fields, 700 kilometres away. He has the equivalent of over 100 cars sitting on the back of his truck. But weight is not his only problem. Mark’s convoy has to cross a series of mountain passes. The conditions of the road allow no margin for error. There’s a police and pilot escort to help him but it’s the driver who gets blamed if anything goes wrong. On a lonely dirt road at the top of north Western Australia, veteran Perth truckie Steve Grahame is a broken man. After an epic 3000-kilometre trek from Perth to the remote coastal community of Kalumburu, he’s fallen just 50 kilometres short of his destination. Part of a dirt track has collapsed under the weight of his 100-tonne road train, burying the last two trailers up to their axles. Graders will try to pull him out. If this last attempt fails, Steve’s trailers could be stuck here for the entire wet season. At Waterloo Station, the rain that stopped Dougal Brett from loading his cattle has cleared. The race is now on to get the cattle rounded up and into trucks before more wet-season rain makes the muddy roads even wetter. Driving cattle trucks with three double-decker trailers, carrying over 200 swaying animals is regarded as one of the toughest trucking jobs there is. And on bad roads, it's twice as tough. On the road to the Rolleston coal mine in central Queensland, Mark King is worried about the heat. Temperatures have passed the 40-degree mark and that's doing dangerous things to the road surface. Mark is worried his rig’s 180-tonne weight and 650-horsepower engine could start ripping up the melting road from underneath him. Steve Grahame has crossed the last flooded river between him and his destination of Kalumburu. But his water worries are far from over, a massive storm’s come out of nowhere. After a three-week struggle Steve’s truck is bogged again just walking distance from his destination.
5	"Episode 5"	17 November 2014 (2014-11-17)
In far North Queensland, tanker driver Steve Hughes is loading up for a supply run to remote clients who need fuel before the wet season cuts them off. At a Perth freight depot tempers are fraying. Husband and wife team, Gordon and Shui, have just finished a two-day non-stop drive but bad weather’s caused them delays. Instead of resting at home, the boss has told them to turn around and do it all again. At the edge of the desert of the Nullarbor Plain, long-distance husband and wife trucking team Mark and Clare Bolitho are 8 hours into their weekly cross continent run. Riding with them on every trip is their 16-year-old dog Roy. Steve and his 28,000-litre load of fuel are heading up a mountain pass. With 20 tonnes of fuel on board, Steve’s tanker strains on the steep incline. All he can do is watch, as car after car tries to squeeze past. Then one driver pushes his luck too far. Gordon and Shui are monitoring the sky for signs of the cyclone that’s already played havoc with their schedule. Heavy rain has washed away large chunks of the highway. Blinding rain is making life hard for tanker driver Steve. His run is taking him deep into the tropical wilderness. Where roads become dirt tracks that can disappear under water in minutes. Back on the Nullarbor Plain, Roy isn’t enjoying the ride. He’s not been himself for most of the journey. Clare’s increasingly worried. Out here there are no vets. Something is troubling Shui. One of the loads looked to have shifted even worse, something could have fallen off. Gordon and Shui have hit a flooded five-hundred-metre stretch of highway in front of them. Shui has to try to avoid the holes where the road has been washed out. If she drives too close to the edge of the bitumen, she risks ending up in the river. Their trip from hell is about to get worse. They arrive at their destination just as it’s being savaged by the fringes of the cyclone. They need an address for another trailer pick-up. But the depot’s deserted. Without checking the roads up ahead this is as far as Steve is prepared to go in his fuel tanker. He drives to the banks of a swollen river he can’t cross. The station owner knows it’s a lost cause. Steve can’t deliver and heads for home before more rain arrives. After driving for two days, Mark and Clare have arrived in Adelaide. But the only cargo they’re worried about is Roy. He needs to get to a vet quickly.

Season 5 (2017)

No.	Title	Original Air Date
1	'Episode 01'	16 May 2017
2	'Episode 02'	23 May 2017
3	'Episode 03'	30 May 2017
4	'Episode 04'	6 June 2017
The Mackay's monster house moving convoy irritates drivers as they race to make curfew.
5	'Episode 05'	13 June 2017
6	'Episode 06'	20 June 2017
7	'Episode 07'	27 June 2017
Country boy Anthony and city wife Danyelle battle bogs and blocked bores to bring water to desperate cattle stations.
8	'Episode 08'	4 July 2017
Steve Grahame feels the pressure as he heads off the dirt and onto the bitumen and into road closures
9	'Episode 09'	11 July 2017
10	'Episode 10'	18 July 2017
Extreme weather and crumbling infrastructure make a short journey across a remote Pacific island one of Mark Cromwell's most challenging jobs ever.
11	'Episode 11'	25 July 2017
In Central Australia, Brad Duckworth's run of bad luck threatens to put the brakes on the construction of an outback airstrip.
12	'Episode 12'	1 August 2017
Paul 'Blinky' Cunningham gets the wind put up him as he moves the largest turbines in Australia from the Port of Newcastle to the White Rock Wind Farm.
13	'Episode 13'	8 August 2017
Steve Grahame battles wild animals and deep sand as he takes on the Great Central Road for the first time since the Wet

See also

• List of Australian television series
• Ice Road Truckers

External links

• Official website