Mack Makeover — Brad Walker’s restored Super-Liner

Brad Walker finds and fixes a 2007 Mack Super-Liner that has spent its working life hauling stock.

Words by Chris Smith. Photography by Chris Smith.

It’s been a couple of years since we featured our first and only CAT Truck in the magazine, which is owned by D & K Walker Transport.

Owner Brad Walker runs Walker’s Landscape Supplies in Wallan, VIC and has to be one of Australian Custom Trucks’ biggest fans.

Understandably one of his biggest joys in life is customising trucks and his latest custom project is this recently completed 2007 Mack Super-Liner.

Brad tells ACT he really wanted a 2007 Super-Liner. A mate of his, Neil Wright, saw three advertised for sale by O’Sullivan’s Transport in Elmore, VIC.

“They had three of them advertised, by the time we got there only two were left,” he says.

“This one had a new motor so that was obviously the one to grab, other than that there wasn’t much in it,” says Brad.

The truck runs a Cummins Signature 620hp with what Brad believes is a series 20 gearbox.

He reckons it was a sad truck when he got it, it had done 1.4-million-kilometres on all dirt roads carting cattle.

“It stunk like cow shit, like you wouldn’t believe, it was really hard to get the smell out.”

His mate Neil had test driven the sister truck and reckoned it drove well. He was seriously tempted to purchase it.

“Neil’s a Kenworth man and he brewed on it for a while, he went back and bought the last one so now he’s got the sister truck to it.

He put a bumper on his so I put the bullbar from his truck on my truck,” he tells ACT.

Brad says the truck was rooted and just the bonnet itself took almost four weeks to repair. This was a similar situation with the bullbar, it was bent and twisted.

He says it took a lot of work to get it looking right.

After the mechanical work was done the Mack was taken to Alrin Panels.

“He painted it, did an awesome job and gees, he put a lot of work into it, he is a gentleman, an absolute gentleman to deal with,” he praises.

Brad says originally the idea was to just paint the chassis.

“I thought I’d work it for a while and keep the top the way it is and just get the chassis painted,” he says.

“Becuase Mack don’t paint their airlines, and other bits and pieces I said we’ll mask that all up, all the valves and the rest, so he did just that,” says Brad.

The chassis looked great but the rest looked shit-house because all that stuff was old and cruddy so no arguments, no nothing, he repainted the whole chassis again for me, didn’t charge me, fair dinkum, then everything was looking good,” he says.

With that kind of service Brad asked for a quote to paint the rest of the truck, the cab and the bonnet.

“I decided then and there to paint it to what you see here,” he says.

Everything was replaced, windscreens, door rubbers, door hinges, headlight surrounds, bunk rubbers, etc.

The scrollwork and signwriting was done by Barry at TFI Group.

The silver lines were painted at the panel shop and Kyzer Kustoms did all the stacks, wrapped the fuel tanks, did the deck plates and steps.

“The three people we dealt with, the painter, the stainless guy and the sign-writer, were all hand-picked deliberately. I said from day one those three people were going to do work on the truck, and they all did a good job, no one let us down, no mistakes, it was just easy, they were all fantastic,” Brad praises the work performed.

He says everyone was on the same page as them.

“We told the sign writer we wanted our initials on the back, we wanted this on the door, we wanted one other thing and we let him do the rest his way, we got it back and loved it.”

Brad admits the only thing people had doubts about was the use of black.

“They all doubted the black but then when it was finished, done and dusted and together, as it sits here now, everyone loves it,” Brad says.

He says people kept on saying it would be too dark and gave him a hard time about his choice.

“I said we’re doing it and even right down to the paint scheme it was mine, I had it set out in my head how I wanted it!”

The tail light bars are all Mack, the bullbar is all Mack.

“I kept it and I wanted it all Mack, I didn’t go with all the new trend of the stainless light tail light bars and all that. What I wanted was that Aussie look not the American look. I wanted that Road Train B Double Aussie look.

I wanted to keep it all Mack. Big tall air cleaners and the rest of it.”

“I like the style of the Mactrans trucks, I like that heavy look, the Aussie look. It’s traditional and it never seems to date.”

One thing that didn’t fit with Brad’s traditional concept for the truck was the cooler that had been placed in the cab, where normally you’d see the Mack signage. This needed to be rectified.

“The panel beater was running around the wreckers trying to find one to cut out of a crashed truck or something and one of his young workers came up to him and said that he thought he could make it. He ended up folding it up out of cardboard and re-did it and they re-glassed it all.

“You would never know it’s not original, he did an awesome job,” explains Brad.

He says there is still a bit of work to be done on the interior and some mechanical stuff to do to it yet. The inside is neat and tidy but he would like to do a little more.

“I’ll put it back to pretty much original,” he says.

“We’ve just got to replace some switches and get the dash tidied up and a couple of new seats. The bunks are all really tidy in there, it’s all original Mack. Maybe we’ll change the steering wheel and probably put in a new gearstick,” he concludes.

The truck is Brad’s hot rod, but it’s also going to be earning its keep.

It will be carting a single trailer hauling fire wood.

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.