Cedric Abood

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2007.

Cedric Abood was born in Lebanon in 1930, travelling to Australia when he was six years old. He was raised in Armidale and educated at De La Salle and moved to Sydney with his family when he was 17. After a small stint in a Ford, Cedric started driving his family's Maple Leaf truck and later an 8-Tonne 1948 Austin tabletop. Cedric worked carting timber and bagged cement from Kandos and Charbon to Sydney with his brothers.

Cedric was the one of the first to take trailers to Birdsville from the east. From their first trip, they established that Thornycroft and ERF were too heavy for the sandy conditions and from 1958 to 1963, they travelled in an S-model Bedford, with a single-axle trailer carrying prefabricated housing kits to stations and landholdings in the desert. However, on occasions they only travelled a mile a day as the sandy conditions forced them to go through the laborious task of laying down corrugated iron, driving over it, picking it up and going through the process again.

Cedric produced a truck to suit their needs. He combined the best parts of various makes to build his ideal vehicle. Miss Rochelle (all of his trucks were named after his children and partner) was a 1965 Foden fitted with a Kenworth cab and a 340 HP Rolls Royce diesel engine on a Hendrickson suspension. It was known as a Fodsworth.

Forgotten makes such as Thornycroft and Foden were given longer lives by changing drivelines, repowering them with Gardner engines and, in later years, Rolls Royce power plants. Every three or four years, trucks were pulling off the road and stripped to the chassis and rebuilt. He could always find a solution to whatever problem came his way and was always willing to help others, a quality for which he will always be remembered. He built his business ensuring the work that was taken on was done well. Cedric passed away in 2001, a true gentleman of the road.