Drive on the wild side

I must admit that, when I first spotted the Wild’s Livestock twin steer Kenworth, it blew me away! It went straight to the top of my ‘I’ve got to know the story behind that’ list. I thought it was going to be such a cool restoration story.

I was so wrong; you want to know why? In order to be a restoration story, the truck has to have been restored! It turns out that the Wild’s Livestock truck has never stopped; it has not had time for a restoration, it is just a hard-working iconic truck.

The truck did get a little downtime when the motor was first replaced with a couple of million kilometres on it. Since then, the big girl has racked up another million-plus kilometres. All up, there is over three and a half million kilometres on a truck nearing its 30th birthday.

I may not have been able to get a restoration story out of owner and driver Ian Wild, but I was certain I would still get some interesting tales. In fact, I got some very ‘wild’ stories. My apologies, I will try hard to avoid any more puns.

DRIVING AND DROVING

Wild’s Livestock’s history can be traced all the way back to 1928 when Ian’s dad Laurie, at a mere 13-years-old, left school and became a drover. His first droving job saw him assisting in the relocation