i know you guys are used to checking out our van but got a little treat for you today
i'm gonna show you rob's rig right over there
and he can explain some of the crazy stuff that goes on with this four wheel drive man truck
what's the process you go through when you start this rig
so from the start the first really important thing which i've taught danny hopefully is
oil the oil on that is perfect i checked the water level so that
yeah so that's my coolant i always like to isolate the battery so i'll switch the batteries on
so then all the trucks live now plug this in i've got a kill switch here then i have another
little hidden kill switch so i switch on the tv i've got a reversing camera in with the key
with diesels you have heater plugs so you let those heat up when it's ready you start the engine
i wait for the air pressure to build i can let the brake off and i'm ready to go so it just makes it
very hard for anyone getting in the truck they've got to know the whole system to start it that's it
so for water that's the water filler
so here is all you know oil and you know just junk so that's another 40 liters of diesel
this is my grey water tank so wash the dishes or have a shower that water goes into here so
these are the domestic batteries and that is a small battery to power the lift at the back
this is my shore power and then here is my mounted bike
emtb so in here is all my towing gear so great big thick towing straps
so here's the garage
so down there all the electrics parts immersion heater for the hot water gas bottles tools
my bed so you can imagine a lovely evening on the beach
doors open i'm in bed this is hydraulic so i press a button this all lifts up and then
um it makes it impossible to get in the back and obviously then i can drive along
so there's my generator it's just a simple petrol three and a half kilowatt generator but here's the
big tank okay here's the smaller tank with those filled up i could do about two and a half thousand
kilometers so i can almost cross a small country the fuel in that country is expensive i fill up
before i cross you know the next place hey look at this thank you very much the two of these and
the uh four jerry cans around the corner uh 570 liters i've got fitted here a primary fuel filter
in a place like africa or central asia where the quality of the diesel is really bad i would be
changing this filter every week the diesel could be black from old engine oil and you know don't
even ask so that is a primary which helps look after the main filters which around this side
we've got two two main fuel filters so those are big fellas that's really it
i've got a shower and ive got a toilet is here so this is a real power shower
because it's off the main electric pump which gives a nice high pressure that's hot and cold
so if i'm on the beach and covered in sand i could just take this and shower outside if
it's private i can just shower with the door open and then i have a loo which is here so that's the
it's a chemical loo that slides out and that means i'm completely self-contained okay no
swearing danny tell me rob how this beast was created this is the 1986 man which is volkswagen
dump truck and in year 2000 a german guy bought it took the tipper off the back sent the truck
back to man and had it completely refurbished then put this living quarters on which is a
german bundepost mobile office had it all kitted out he went around the world in it came back
a dutch guy bought it completely had the whole thing rebuilt again all the inside redone rewired
re-gassed re-plunged you name it him and his wife didn't like it so i bought it it's four wheel
drive it'll drive in two-wheel drive then all the controls for the four-wheel drive are pneumatic
press another button that gives you longitudinal diff locks press another button that's the lateral
diff locks so when it's all locked up you should be able to get out of anything that's linked to
bulge water gearboxes they're the best german so it's got 24 forward gears 4 reverse yeah it's got
a pneumatic splitter on the gearbox so it's like overdrive in every gear the engine is a diesel six
liter straight six cylinder with a light pressure turbo charger on it at altitude the turbo charger
gives you that compression to keep the power on i bought it because there were no electronics on the
engine so there's a problem in africa asia south america you fix it with a hammer or a spanner
so these are really sought after because they're so easy to fix well tell me about your electrical
system i have separate electrical system to start the truck the 24 volt to each time i stop i just
isolate those so when i'm running the engine it also charges the domestic battery so then
when i stop the solar panels are adding power to the batteries that's two ways then i have a
petrol generator about every forth day i'll hit the generator for six seven eight hours
and that'll bring everything right up to tip top again i've also can plug into electronic grid
you know we call it a shoreline that gives me instant power that it's a sort of super booster
to pick up the uh worldwide web this is my water tank domestic batteries this is my diesel central
heating that's just to control the radio tells me how much gas is left in my gas propane bottles
that is gas powering to gas heat water and gas center heating which i don't use because that uses
too much gas i just use diesel that is a immersion electric immersion heater for my hot water
so that is absolute heaven inverter so press that button and it gives me 240 volts whole
charging control panel really and in the back i've got computers that manage all the electrics for
the whole truck rob has a history with boats always funny to hear you say like shore power
or provisions those are boat words so that would be starboard this is port that's the bow that's
the stern so you're kind of like us where you know using power to cook would take so much electricity
it's not very feasible because in here are you running a propane system for cooking i completely
cook on gas so four gas rings an oven grill that's all i use gas for the same as with your truck i've
got wabasco central heating mine's powered off diesel you have to have central heating because
where we're going it's going to get cold so that's how you cook but how do you refrigerate your food
so originally i had this fridge here which is a sort of a small version of the domestic fridge
you get in your house it uses too much power if the temperature is over 30 degrees c about
85 90 fahrenheit that just stops i bought this in australia actually and i bought a cheap one
but this is a deep freeze that's a chiller so it's about 50 60 liter or whatever
so if i'm going really off grid this is absolutely round full of food because without a chiller you
know you're really going to struggle particularly if there aren't many shops about you there's some
places you go for days and there's nowhere to buy food here i've got all my you know cutlery
and stuff and then there's food and stuff then this little stuff what about your water system do
you have some filters or do you just get purified water yeah i've got my running water hot and cold
i've got a twin sink whatever you call it i never buy bottled water i don't like plastic bottles
i've got a 450 liter water tank where i fill that up with i'm very careful so what i do there is
pour a glass of water out of the source that i'm going to fill the tank from smell it take a good
drink leave it for 24 hours to see what happens to me wow and if it's okay i fill the tank i put a
chlorine-based additive in the tank you know make doubly sure two things are absolutely critical
when you're traveling around the world one is your health if you lose your health you're really
in trouble and if your truck loses its health similarly you know you've got real problems so
you have to look after the spaceship and you look after you i have got you know really special water
filters very effective it's a system straight off yachts they do sort of block fairly quickly
so i've taken them out in egypt southern egypt i couldn't get any water drinkable water anywhere
i went to a supermarket and ordered i think it was 25 bottles of 20 liter 25 yeah i think it's
20 25 something like that i mean a truck came and delivered them and i got on the roof and siphoned
the whole lot into the tank so just spent all day with the hose and you know then i was safe
rob's been around the world in this rig can you explain a little bit the route that you've taken
i'm a welsh boy so i started in the uk at my daughter's house chester
down through europe east down through croatia the dalmatian coast absolutely beautiful
the greece turkey georgia azerbaijan a ship over the caspian sea to kazakhstan
uzbekistan tajikistan all along the afghan border all the way up to the chinese border so that's the
pamia highway one of the five most dangerous roads in the world i met the american special forces on
that road by the way up to the chinese border then across to kyrgyzstan back into kazakhstan then
i was trying to get over the top of afghanistan because you can't go into afghanistan you couldn't
then and you can't now i was trying to get across just into china over into pakistan india nepal
and down to singapore that way but those borders were blocked because of political stuff i had to
come back to greece i had to drive for three weeks to get out of the central asian winter
which you know is literally a killer it headed to greece and then i shipped to
egypt and then drove down through egypt sudan ethiopia kenya tanzania zambia botswana namibia
south africa cape town that was all that so then i ship from the port elizabeth in south africa to
melbourne australia went right around australia and across the middle i got caught in australia
when COVID hit so that was a nice place to be actually i was able to ship to mexico so now from
mexico down through all central america down to panama ship to colombia and now i'm heading south
to patagonia near the very southern tip of south america then i'll go up to uruguay and then that's
easiest place to ship back to europe wow and that's the whole world it'll take me five years
so i've been doing four years nearly now four years in june so you've shipped multiple times
now and for us we've only done once from panama to colombia in our van you can fit it in a container
so that cost eighteen hundred for us i was wondering how much it cost for you to ship
well first you said you crossed the caspian sea is that just a ferry that was an old russian ship i
mean just it was a on this ship it actually took trains so it had railway lines so they pulled
trains in it big trucks my truck there were other travelers the people on it we had a good laugh i
think that was actually that was expensive it took 36 48 hours i think it was about 500 us and it
was a very corrupt buying the ticket was corrupt that seems like a fair price for such a long boat
right yeah i suppose so but you didn't see the boat the next ship he was from greece to egypt
so that was using grimaldi which is an italian roll on roll off because this this won't go in
a container has to go on a roll on roll off those are those big ugly square ships full of brand new
cars they hold about eight thousand cars and me i would say that was a us dollars probably about
three and a half thousand the egyptian ports are nightmares so the three and a half thousand us
includes port fees and add-ons and turning dollars into documents i think it's the best way to
we'll just leave it at that but it gets you out so then from cape town to australia was including all
port fees agents fixers fixers being people who helped you with the port and customers 5 000 u.s
but something like that five six thousand wow shipping is like witchcraft because i've got a
spreadsheet that shows dollars per sea mile and it just doesn't calculate i would always get about 15
quotes and it'll still be for the four same ships and the prices will vary from fifteen
thousand us dollars to six thousand for the same services so you have to work
yeah thanks for having me in your house here so we did the measurements and it's actually 15 feet
long by eight feet wide 120 square feet of living space in here and a six foot three inch clearance
for your head so this thing seems plenty big to go around the world in but what was your reason
for taking off and why are you on the road i mean i started thinking about this when i was age about
40. you know my life was really the same as everybody else's i was very lucky i had a fabulous
childhood did fine at school didn't particularly enjoy it but i did what i had to do i went to
university i didn't enjoy that so i left at the end of the first year and i went into my career
i sailed a lot skied i traveled you know a lot but only on holidays you know in the uk we get
30 days holiday a year nice so you know i was doing three weeks of this and two weeks of that
so you know we were getting around with my wife and then our daughter but i was quietly thinking
that you know pals of mine after they've done uni you know they've done some serious traveling
well i hadn't i've seen all these documentaries on tv about africa or america or you know you name it
so when i was about 60 odd so we sold the family house business sailing boat cars you know you name
it we just sold everything so my wife and daughter were able to have a buy a house i just picked that
opportunity i thought if i'm going to get around the world yes now wow so i found this truck
and off i went so far i'm glad i did it because i'm still alive you know i still got my health
there you go you know you need to be thinking you've got to be on the ball you're gonna look
after yourself and you need a bit of luck in your trip around the world what's been your
favorite spot on each continent turkey was really surprised how just how hospitable the turks were
what a fantastic country it is i mean it's huge then in central asia tajikistan is just stunning
go down through africa botswana or namibia or you know sort of around that area it's pretty nice
australia is australia expensive but it's a fantastic place central america guatemala south
america we're in south america so it's too early to say although i did like colombia so you know
it's difficult to say that isn't it huge thanks to rob for inviting us all into his home and telling
us a bit of his life let us know what you thought of this big rig tour in the comments if you'd like
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