Mercedes mog5/17/2023 ![]() The fertile red dirt of Werribee South has long been an ideal location for growing vegetables and to date this productive patch of soil has done its best to stare down the march of urban expansion in Melbourne’s outer west. The spreaders handle territory that encompasses roughly a 100km radius around Melbourne and the two Unimogs spend a lot of time on the road mixing it with traffic as well as churning around various, paddocks, race tracks and parks. You have to be nice when speaking to a man who has tonnes of burnt lime at his disposal, so I made sure I used my manners when I caught up with Squires and his driver, Gianni Caon, at their shed recently. Noel still pilots the oldest 2450 Unimog on a daily basis. The fleet now numbers three vehicles, an older 2450 Unimog, a U400 which acts as a spare and a brand new U430. Squires also happens to be the longest running commercial Unimog operator in Australia having purchased his first back in the early 1980s.Īnd the business has seen 10 ’Mogs in service over that period of time. The spreaders also handles work for turf clubs and sporting grounds. Werribee South-based Noel Squires (above) owns and operates The Spreaders, a business started by his father Colin over 50 years ago.Īs the name may suggest this business specialises in spreading sand, lime, fertiliser, gypsum and other products for the agricultural sector. The first right-hand drive U430 Unimog landed on Australian shores recently and we got to climb behind the wheel and take the new implement carrier for a jaunt, both on and off road. The Mog’s history in Australia has for the most part been a military one.īut Daimler Australia is trying to take advantage of the extensive global toy box that the company has access to, and target niche areas where vehicles such as the Unimog are a walk-up start. The big beasty U4000 and U5000 Unimog is a heavier duty truck variant anyone with military experience may have fond memories of a similar truck. The U400 has been designed to enable all manner of auxiliary equipment to be mounted on its torsionally stiff yet laterally flexible frame. The Unimog range starts with the baby U400 and U500 series, which covers the more mundane vocational roles that may be covered by a true implement carrier. It can even be found shunting rail wagons. Multi-taskingįrom street sweeping to freeway verge mowing to snow ploughing to load lugging in hard-to-get-to-places, the Unimog seems to have a spec for all occasions. However, Daimler mostly just refer to the ‘Mog as an ‘Implement Carrier’, which really just means that there aren’t a lot of jobs, vocational or otherwise that it can’t do. The best clue to the true definition of the Unimog really lies in its name, which is an abbreviation of the charmingly Teutonic ‘Universal-Motor-Gerät’ or Universal Motorised Working Machine. Part truck, part tractor, all off-roader - ‘the Mog’, as it’s often affectionately called, does its best to defy definition. It really is kind of hard to find a box that the Mercedes-Benz Unimog fits into. The wheel of the first U430 Unimog in the country The Mercedes-Benz Unimog has been a mud-slinging all-rounderįor more than 60 years.
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