Striking Gold: the Klos Bros’ Melosi Gold Nugget Kenworth

The Klos Bros found gold in a paddock in Dubbo when they found a W900 Limited Edition Aerodyne Gold Nugget. Australian Custom Trucks tracked down its original owner and Robbie Rose took some spectacular pictures of this spectacular custom built truck.

Original ACT archive feature. Photography by Robbie Rose.

The W900 Limited Edition Aerodyne was available for custom built production since April 1984 until 1987 and was Kenworth’s top of the line model.

PACCAR dubbed its top of the line offering the “Gold Nugget” with livery adorning the hood of a miner panning for gold reflecting the opulence of the Limited Edition range.

Kenworth, in its marketing collateral at the time stated, “Based on the proven Kenworth W900 Conventional Series, the Limited Edition has been designed specifically for the discerning truck operator.”

“All appointments have been carefully chosen for their quality – and practicality with today’s trucking operations in mind.

“Investing in a Kenworth has always made good business sense, investing in a Limited Edition may well be the most astute decision of all.”

It was mid-eighties and this jewel came with a heap of standard extras like the colour TV and fridge, additional instrumentation like the engine oil temperature gauge, the transmission oil temperature gauge, rear axle oil temperature gauge and an exhaust pyrometer. The driver and rider seats were Kenworth torsion bar seats with adjustable head restraints.

The Aerodyne sleeper box was 915mm with walk through cabin access. It had two storage compartments mounted over the bunk and a third, a rear access tool compartment. It also had a specially designed detachable suit closet fitted in the sleeper box. With its black carpet and calculator fitted to the driver’s sun visor it was both stylish and state of the art.

It also came with a radio, cassette player and 40 Channel UHF CB and if that wasn’t enough it had a ventilation fan fitted to the roof.

The Limited Edition also came with a unique plaque with the owner’s name, and vehicle chassis number inscribed fitted to the cabin overhead console.

It’s the name on the Klos Bros W900 Limited Edition Aerodyne “Gold Nugget” that intrigued me into finding out a little more about its original owners.

The plaque reads W900 and underneath this No 5. To the side it says Limited Edition Aerodyne Chassis Number 406834 Custom Engineered for G Melosi & Sons PTY. LTD.

We wanted to know more about the history of this great looking truck and about that inscription, so we did a lot of digging, calling as many people as we could, including the guys at PACCAR, and using that all so faithful tool Google. We finally tracked down Roland Melosi who remembered when his father was agonising over buying her almost 30 years ago.

G Melosi & Sons was the company Roland’s Grandfather had set up in 1949. The family were skilled in making small goods.

“My dad and his brother carried the business on till 1985 until my dad and I bought the business out after his brother passed away, we bought his family’s share,” Roland explains.

“It was at this time we bought the Kenworth brand new, we were in the market to buy one,” he says.

“We were carting to our depots all around New South Wales and returning we were picking up pigs from the slaughter houses right around NSW.”

Roland says the family business had built itself up to 200 employees and was servicing NSW and Victoria.

“We paid about $250 thousand for it back then but that was for a complete rig though with the trailer and all,” he says.

“I remember at the time it was a big investment and my dad was pulling his hair out, however it paid itself off in the end with the publicity he got from it.

“We looked at it for two things, naturally for cartage and we also used it as a portable bill board, so we dressed it up pretty good and she came up good at the time,” he says.

It was a real growth phase for the company and the decision to buy a semi-trailer to do its work turned out to be a great decision.

“We bought another truck as well, and that was a Volvo so we had two trucks running at the same time doing all our distribution and bringing back our raw materials, pigs or beef or whatever,” he says.

The success of the business didn’t go unnoticed and the business was approached by another company.

“We were pretty big at the time and we serviced a lot of the delis in Sydney and Melbourne, these people came and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse,” he says.

In 1992 the business was sold to Plumrose.

“It was a bit of a traumatic time for us when we first sold because there was a lot of history behind it, but we moved on,” he says.

“I retired at 40, I didn’t do much in the first year but in the second year I started pulling my hair out so I bought a quail farm. When I turned 50 I sold that. When I was 55 I started this, Montecatini Small Goods, and when I turned 60 everyone asked if I was going to sell this but I am happy I have my son and son in-law working with me and its good, it going well.”

Much like the Gold Nugget, Roland has also come full circle and is back doing what he loves, working with small goods in a family business.

“We have come back into small goods, we came back into it about seven years ago and we are trading out of Penrith in Sydney,” he explains.

Just like Roland, the Gold Nugget got another go.

John Holt, the most current driver of the Melosi Gold Nugget, says the truck was found in a paddock in Dubbo.

“It was sitting in a paddock, but it wasn’t knocked about, which was good,” he recalls. He says the Gold Nugget retains its original paint job however the chassis has been repainted and extended. It was stripped right down to the bare chassis and put back together again including a complete refurbishment of the cab.

It took six months to complete the job and the truck now has a 560 horsepower Cat engine married to an 18 speed Spicer with 44,000 lb Rockwell diffs.

The name has changed on the door but the Klos Bros wanted to retain as much of the character of the original truck as they could.

The boys have a keen eye for style and an even keener sense in preserving trucking history.

Rear Vision: where are they now?

Do you know where this truck is today, or have an update on its story? Tell ACT what happened next. We will verify current updates before adding them to the archive.