Phat, 40 & Fabulous — Mark Tobin’s Kenworth Legend T950

Mark Tobin Transport’s limited-edition Legend T950 brings old-school Kenworth style together with carefully chosen custom details.

Words by Warren Aitken. Photography by Warren Aitken.

There are certain things in life that are guaranteed to turn a man’s head, regardless of their persuasions.

Certain things like a cold carton of free beer, like Keira Knightly in the opening scenes of Pirates of the Caribbean, or like the distant sound of a Jake brake as you take a sunset stroll with your wife. Added to the list has got to be the sight of the all Australian iconic Kenworth T950.

Mark Tobin Transport managed to snap up one of the limited edition T950 Legend series announced last year and boy does it turn heads.

The T950 was one of Kenworth’s flagship models for many many years.

Its run was ended in 2007 when the desire to protect the world from exhaust emissions overcame our love of black smoke blowing power trains.

Unable to incorporate the EGR cooling systems within the confines of the T950 bonnet, production ceased.

In 2015 however, Kenworth Australia announced they would be releasing 75 T950 Legends.

The 75 trucks, though individually specced, would include many throwback testaments to the original stalwarts. Round tanks, ‘old style’ Kenworth bug, original Cummins badges as well as the new Cummins E5 engine which was even painted a similar beige colour as represented in the original T950s.

Unlike previous special editions put out by Kenworth that involved adding special features and signage to current models the manufacturing of 75 T950s was an enormous task for Kenworths Bayswater factory as these would involve major adjustments on their increasingly busy production line.

Rumour of the announcement had spread well before the official announcement was made in October last year, and when they went on sale the 950s lasted about as long as an Australian prime minister.

There Monday, gone by Wednesday.

So it came down to a first in first served basis, and we are talking literally minutes here. The T950s were a high demand item.

Mark Tobin was one of the very lucky 74 owners, and a very thankful one at that. Mark’s father Bernie Tobin, along with Alan Salpietro were the co-founders of Queensland’s largest family owned transport company Followmont Transport. So therefore Mark has been in the transport game since his first breath. Mark started working in the family owned company almost twenty years ago and like a true blue truckie Mark started at the bottom.

Having earned his stripes working his way up through the company from yard boy to his current position as general manager makes Mark a manager who can actually fill the ‘safety boots’ of any position within the company.

Thankfully they don’t have promo girls though. I’d hate to see him filling that role.

Marks day to day commitment is to the running of Followmont Transport, with an excess of 600 pieces of equipment, it’s always a busy day. However, Mark has never really lost his general childhood love for Trucks and in particular Kenworth Trucks.

That love of Trucks was the driving force behind the creation of MTT, Mark Tobin Transport.

Mark Tobin Transport is a bit of a fallacy when it comes to the name.

While the stand alone transport company may be the recipient of Marks passion for classic trucks, the day to day running and full credit for the success of the business actually goes to Mark’s wife Fiona.

I did query Mark as to why it wasn’t actually called Fiona Tobin Transport and received a cheeky smile and shrug. Though Mark admitted his young daughter has taken note of all mums work and kindly informed him “when I take over Dad it will be called TTT, Taylor Tobin Transport.”

Mark has always had a love of the Kenworth product. Nearly 50% of the followmont fleet sport the KW badge.

“I just love them,” Mark admits, “they just keep going, you can repower them and then they’ll just keep going again”.

“We’ve got some Kenworths that are up around the 3 million kilometre mark, you can’t knock them at that,” exclaims Mark.

So it came as no surprise to Brown and Hurley salesman Jim Boeler that Mark was on the phone as soon as the T950s went up for sale.

Jim even managed to snag build number 40 to coincide with Marks 40th birthday.

Although there were specific compulsory requirements with the T950s, like the round tanks, Cummins engine and ‘old school’ badging. The rest of the setup was left to the owners.

After leaving Kenworth’s Bayswater factory, Mark’s T950 headed up to Justin and Chris at Briskair to fit the cooling unit to the 50” bunk.

Leaving there it headed to Tony Gibbs at Truckwriters, who did an amazing job of the signwriting and scroll work.

When it came to ‘blinging the truck up,’ Mark reached out to Ryan Northcott of 1st Choice Auto Electrics and Night Lights Custom Stainless. Having dealt with Ryan for a few jobs in relation to a rebuild on a Gold Nugget and being impressed with his attention to detail, Mark was happy to put the T950 in Ryan’s hands. They spent a good couple of hours discussing Mark’s vision and desire to stay ‘old school,’ then Ryan was left with it.

The truck spent four weeks at Ryan’s work shop and hardly anything was left untouched. The big jobs are what catches the eye, the wrapped tanks, the custom stainless visor, the air cleaner shrouds, the rear guards, even the mirror finish wrap for the Briskair system.

It’s when you look a bit closer that the real detail literally shines through.

Custom Tobin transport mudflap weights to fit the ‘old school’ logo style mud flaps.

All the added lighting reflects the traditional bullet styling, MTT logo fitted in the bunk steps, the rubber wing trims were skinned in mirror stainless, Custom Tobin Transport number plate frames, the alloy KW grill bars, even a custom stainless cap for the adblue tank, the list is almost endless. As much as I’d like to list every customisation on this beautiful beast I fear my computer will run out of ink before I get there, but special mention has to go to Ryan’s extra little interior tribute he surprised Mark with. A mirror finish interior floor plate displaying the classic KW symbol, the family name and truck title ‘T950 LEGEND, She’s 40.’

The impressive thing about this particular T950 is the overall effect, and the fact it has a kind of ‘go back for a second look’ feel to it. Every time you take a look you notice another little touch that drags you back to the old school styling of the original T950s.

Yet at the same time all the extras on it don’t overload the system. You can’t help but turn your head to watch it as it cruises past. I think Mark summed it up the best when I asked him what he likes so much about the T950.

“It’s just a beautiful truck, beautiful to drive and beautiful to look at.”

Rear Vision: where are they now?

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