In 1936, outback mailman Tom Kruse dismantled an old Thornycroft vehicle, taking its rear axles and transmission, and fitting them to a Leyland Badger. This modification allowed him to complete the world’s most remote mail run, over 500km each way from Maree in South Australia to Birdsville in Central Queensland, travelling through outback Australia’s unforgiving terrain for the next 25 years.
Pioneers like Tom opened up our country and to do this, they had to rely on vehicles tough enough to traverse our rugged land.
Since 1969, Terrain Tamer has been learning from these pioneers – sometimes the hard way.
Formed by Frank Hutchinson and Don Kyatt in 1969, Terrain Tamer was created to service the Bedford drivers of Melbourne, and has been learning from these pioneers ever since.
The most infamous of these is Bill King from Australian Adventure Tours (AAT Kings), one of Terrain Tamer’s earliest customers, who built his business on the back of the Bedford parts that the company supplied him.
Bill’s journeys up through the red centre and back, following tracks like Burke & Wills, tracks where the Stuart Highway now runs, or even into the Simpson Dessert, often meant he’d return having broken, damaged or weakened parts. It was up to the Terrain Tamer team to then design, modify or source a stronger part so the next tour could go on without disruption.
Recognising that while every vehicle has its strengths, they all have weaknesses that can stop them in their tracks without a care for location, the Terrain Tamer team quickly learned what works well and how they can strengthen a vehicle to ensure safe passage through our dangerous yet beautiful landscape.
From the Bedfords of yesteryear, to the LandCruisers and Patrols of today, the knowledge Terrain Tamer have shared with their customers, has manifested itself into a range of over 40,000 unique 4WD parts, the culmination of almost 50 years of engineering, field testing, metallurgy and manufacture.
In 2017, Terrain Tamer launch their next Game Changer “Terrain Tamer TV”, which can be seen at terraintamer.tv