Unimog’s terrible record

THE same kind of military truck that overturned and injured 18 soldiers in Sydney was previously involved in two other roll-over incidents, the army says. The article leads “truck has history of accidents” Oh my God, that’s terrible! Hang on – we’ve had thousands of Unimogs for something like 30 years and they’ve only rolled three times. There, that’s a lot better. Who writes these stupid articles?

4 comments

  • Probably 1735099 trying to make Holdens look good, now that he has a ute.  You know what he’s like with numbers…..not a clue.

  • and why are the police involved, wasn’t the accident on military property and on a military exercise….

  • You actually have to try really hard to roll a Unimog. One of the roll overs they are talking about happened in 2005 south of Darwin. It blew a tyre and killed the passenger who wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I had only just marched into the battalion, and was leaving on the same exercise three days later. 

    It’s a great truck, and I’ve done things in one that would leave most weekend 4WD enthusiasts speechless. It is old now though, and the replacements are apparently quite capable. I just hope to see them before I reach compulsory retirement, which is only 30 odd years away. 

  • My thoughts exactly. I drove them sideways across slopes that you could barely stand on – slopes that would be black runs in the ski fields. Scared the bejesus out of me, but they never gave any hint of rolling. They’d always start sliding before they tipped. Driving fast on a gravel road – different story. You can flip an F1 car on a gravel road.

    They might be old, but so were the ACCO F1s that were the mainstay when I did my drivers course. And they were all built well before I was born (Vietnam era), and they were still going strong when they were retired.

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