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Dude, here’s my car | Big Mack hauled record trailer train down the track

By Bree Harding

Sep 4, 2025

It was April 1994 in Bourke, a dusty outback town in NSW, on the road train-approved Mitchell Hwy, just south of the Queensland border, during its centenary celebrations.

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Kevin ‘Plugger’ Bowden was lining his Mack MKII V8 Superliner up at the sale yards, ready to (and confident he would) break the record for the most trailers towed.

A picture from the record attempt in Bourke, in 1994.

In Winton, in 1993, a 14-trailer record had superseded the previous 13-trailer record set in Bourke, which was broken soon after with a 16-trailer haul.

Plugger didn’t just attempt to break the record by one or two carriages.

He had 29 stock trailers and 28 dollies stretching 439m in a snake-like fashion from the Bourke sale yards behind his magic Mack.

The iconic vehicle has undergone a full restoration. Photo by Bree Harding

It weighed in at a whopping 500 tonnes.

When he began the pull, black smoke billowed and the rear differential shattered.

Plugger plugged on, shifting gears and getting up to around 28km/h before a panicked two-way radio call urged him to stop when the rear trailer clipped a power pole.

All the bells and whistles have been added to the showpiece. Photo by Bree Harding

Trailers one to six braked on command. Seven to 29 had minds of their own.

The damage to the Superliner was fixed with generous donations from the entertained crowd, and Plugger continued standard truck work for another decade with the 1988-model beast, before selling it to his nephew Mark ‘Popeye’ Bowden when he fell ill in 2005.

Trailers were sourced from companies and operators in Bourke’s vicinity.

Two years later, Plugger passed away.

There were many more records broken since, but the 113-trailer (1474.3m-long), 150m distance tow in a single Mack Titan prime mover, set by John Atkinson in Clifton, Queensland, February 2006, remains to this day.

Popeye sold Plugger’s record-breaking Superliner in 2013 to another family steeped in trucking history.

The truck is on display at MOVE for a limited time. Photo by Bree Harding

It went to Toowoomba and was stripped bare to undergo a complete restoration before being debuted at the Casino Truck Show.

Now, it is on display in the Goulburn Valley at MOVE.

“We have a lot of iconic vehicles pass through the museum, like the Peter Brock Torana and the Ambrose dual-championship-winning car, but iconic trucks like this Mack Superliner and the yellow C510 (Moby Dick) are just as, if not more, popular, with the trucking community,” MOVE’s Andrew Church said.

“We are privileged to have such iconic vehicles on display.”