You could always hear it before you saw it.
Long before Allan Morrow got behind the wheel, he knew that sound by heart; the deep rattling growl of an 8V71 GM Detroit Diesel engine echoing down the road.
It was the kind of sound that made windows hum, and birds scatter from trees.
In Gladstone, everyone called it the ‘bird scarer’.
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“I’ve admired this truck since my early childhood, back when she was the pride of the fleet pulling a bogie float,” he says.
“I always thought it was the coolest and best sounding truck in town. You could hear that engine coming for miles! Everyone in town knew that truck.”
The 1974 White 9000 belonged to Mick Blomfield of Blomfield Excavations, a name known in the Gladstone area for 50 years.
Allan had admired this truck from a distance for year, and by a twist of fate, he would finally get the chance to drive it.
After running his own earthmoving business for 20 years, Allan shut up shop in 2018 and took a job working for Mick himself.
“Mick offered me a job, and by that time, the old White had been semi-retired to the quarry water cart. I then got paid to drive the truck I’d loved all these years,” he says.
“For the past eight years I’ve been working on Mick to buy the truck from him, but anyone that knows him, knows he doesn’t sell anything.”
When Mick finally announced he was retiring, Allan got the call he’d been waiting for.
The Bird Scarer was his.
Allan wants to keep it as original as possible, he intends to restore and paint it up in the same Blomfield Excavations colour that it has always been, caterpillar yellow.
He expects the restoration to take about 12 months, and when it’s done, the White 9000 won’t be going to back to work. Instead, it will be towing a bogie float, taking Allan’s vintage tractors to shows.
He even plans on putting Mick’s name on the door.
“It doesn’t need a great deal of work, mainly cosmetic fix ups,” he says.
“My town’s pretty small and this truck was from my early childhood, it’s just always been in my life.”
Allan’s got a soft spot for the classics. He’s got a couple of B61 Macks waiting their turn for a resto in the shed, none of them are complete just yet.
Growing up with both sides of his family in transport, he says his love of trucks has been “pretty hard to get out of”.
With the town’s crown jewel finally his after years of fighting, Allan and the Bird Scarer’s story is only just beginning.
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