Africa—meet the truck with no name

Our home for 43 weeks. You can see under-floor compartments, the wood tray and sandmats

Poor John and I have been on multiple overland journeys since 2009, starting with an epic 43-week expedition through Africa.

I’ve introduced that trip in my two previous posts. Now it’s time to introduce the beast that took us most of the way—our truck with no name.

Our driver, Chris (yes he has a name), said he objected to having a named truck, so it remained ‘the truck’ until we left it behind in Nairobi. It was to be retired and sold.

Looking back, I can honestly say it was my favourite truck of all our overland vehicles, and that mostly had to do with its brilliant layout.

But before I go into detail about how it was set up, I have to say that Chris hated that truck because it was a Mercedes and not a Scania. He never got over that, but he dealt with it.

Most of the underfloor compartments open for cooking

So on to the Mercedes, which was built around 1994 and so about 15 years old when we set out. Chris thought it might have started life as a beverage delivery truck, but it was converted to an overlander in Tanzania. It was 2-wheel drive, but 4 would have been better. More about that in another post.

The mundane specs are that it was 11 metres long and just under 4 metres tall, which included the wood rack on top (that got knocked off by a low-hanging branch in Nigeria). It was set up to carry 2000 litres of diesel and 400 litres of water (in 20 jerry cans). Accessing water was a big issue on this trip, especially in West Africa, and deserves its own post.

There were no side windows—only tarpaulins on each side that were held down by bungee cords. At the front, there was also an overhead viewing space covered by another tarpaulin. All the side tarpaulins stayed down when the weather was cold or rainy, but otherwise they stayed up until we camped for the night.

The cab was separate and seated two, with a small space behind the seats for a person to lie down. The back had seats for 28 with two people per bench. We were 28 people in all so there were only ever two vacant seats for the first couple of months.

Bench seat is up to reveal a storage space

Now this is where the truck’s layout starts to come in to play. The seat of each bench could be removed to expose a compartment where two people could store their day-to-day possessions. There was a separate, large compartment where everyone’s tents and sleeping mats were stored.

But of course, what is virtually a year’s worth of stuff isn’t going to fit in such a small compartment, so our main bags were stored under the floor. Now the amazing thing here was that our bags could be accessed from drop-down doors on either side of the truck or by lifting the floorboards inside truck.

Food supplies were stored the same way—accessible from the outside and from under the floorboards. This was so useful because the truck was so wide that some foodstuffs couldn’t be easily reached from the outside.

Food storage

More food storage

More storage

There were outside compartments that housed the cookware, dishes and cutlery. There was only one way to store this gear (or it wouldn’t fit) and at one campsite we had a competition to see which team could put everything away the fastest.

Sandmats were stored on the outside of the truck. These were critical for helping us to get out of our many times of being struck.

I won’t say where Trevor, the safe, was located. He’s shy like that. But two other aspects come to mind. There was a shelf that ran down each side of the truck where we stored books and snacks. I have a funny story for later when some shoes fell off the shelf. There was also a charging station (that didn’t always work) and a button to communicate with the cab (that conked out early on). Mostly we had to open a front window and bang on the roof of the cab.

All aboard. You can see more of the storage compartment down the side

It was also the only truck that had it’s entrance at the back, which also meant we had two windows at the back. That’s something I’ve really missed on every other overland vehicle. You see something go by and look back, but then can’t see anything if there aren’t any rear windows.

Now that I’ve mentioned the back, I should explain that the stairs had to be pulled up when the truck was moving.

And a last comment about security. Tarpaulins aren’t all that secure. When we stopped for lunch or for other reasons, we took it in turns (in pairs) to mind the truck.

I realise I’ve only scratched the surface here, so feel free to ask as many questions as you like.

Next African instalment will be about cook groups, but first a bit from Barcelona, the scene of that horrible attack.

The stuffed animal at the window was our mascot.

We spent a lot of time reading