Robert ‘Bob’ Frederick Whitehead was born on 13th April 1925 in Willoughby Sydney.
Bob’s early life was spent on the family’s 30 acre poultry farm and his schooling in North Sydney. Later, he and his family moved to the Dellwood Dairy Company at Ferndell Street, South Granville NSW.
Bob was always mechanically minded and would do things like add extra axles with springs from car seats to his billy cart. Bob left home at 15 and started working at a meat preserving company doing maintenance around the plant. A fellow employee suggested Bob’s talents would be better put to use if he joined the RAAF as a mechanic.
Bob married his first wife, Gloria, before enlisting in RAAF in WWII and serving bases around NSW and QLD. He was stationed in Townsville maintaining water trucks, supplying troops involved in the Coral Sea battle.
Back in Sydney after the war, he maintained taxis and then became a mechanic at a service station, where George Sergeant pointed out he wasn’t getting fair treatment and suggested he could do much better if he started his own business maintaining trucks.
Bob set up business at home, the purchased a block in Chester Hill NSW. Gradually, the business grew into body/chassis modificstions and engine repowering work.
Seeing shortcomings of the various tuck suspensions, Bob devised a fully load sharing oscillating front twin steer and rear suspension and thus PermAtrak trailing axle suspension were created.
Working under tents, the factory was eventually established. As time progressed, Bob’s children, Robert Jnr, Velma, Vanna and Georgia all joined the business from an early age.
The turning point for Robert’s business was converting two Commer trucks (4x2) into 8x4 tippers ir Bill Davidson. Bill was so happy, he came back and asked Bob to build a complete truck for his, and so the first RFW truck, using KM Bedford cab, was delivered in April 1969.
RFW built 380 trucks up until July 1994.
He designed transfer cases with aux drives, hot shift PTO, diff cross locks, fire proof cabins etc. from his kitchen table and all were custom hand built.
Sadly, Robert passed away on 16th February 2010 in Bass Hill.
Inducted in 2024
