Christian Ambichler, a 40 year old Austrian man, emailed Tefco with the story of his latest achievement: constructing 5 model Tefco Trailers and a truck to suit at a scale of 1:14.
He saw a report on Australia’s Road Trains 5 years ago and in 2003 he started researching on the internet. His favourite trailer was the Tefco Roll Master.
From a single photo and animation on Tefco’s website, Christian began designing and constructing the A Trailer. The finished model has working functions such as lights activating, the body tips up and down, and the landing legs raise and lower.
For all 5 trailers a total of approximately 2500 handmade parts were used including wheels, mudflaps, axles, suspensions, frame and other component replicas.
The aluminium parts were polished to a mirror finish, and over 4900 screws, nuts and washers were used, and 100 metres of electrical cabling to complete the road train.
After 4954 hours or nearly 5 years, Christian completed his Australian Road Train. All the tippers are independent of each other and radio controlled with one remote. The light functions operate via an infra-red system created by Christian to send the signals from one trailer to another.
The length of the model is 4 metres and it has been shown at Model Shows in Germany.
Everyone at Tefco has been quite amazed at Christian’s skill and dedication, and stunned that a Tefco Trailer has inspired someone on the other side of the world.
A version of this story appears in Truckin' Life magazine's September 2008 issue.
Click to read Christians Email # 1
Click to read Christian's Email # 2
Click to read Truckin' Life story