As featured in Truck & Driver Magazine

Anyone visiting Truckfest couldn't help but see the striking silver Daf 95XF sporting scenes from the Thunderbirds puppet series.

And as Truck & Driver discovered, its background is as interesting as the adventures of International Rescue.
The man behind the Thunderbirds truck is Julian Arnold, generally known as Arnie. His father was a fitter/engineer so Arnie was brought up with the smell of oil and grease in his nostrils.
On leaving school Arnie trained as a toolmaker but preferred to tinker with engines so he became a mechanic at various Volvo, Ford and Renault dealerships.

And then a friend who worked for Kinlocks, where The Brothers TV series about a haulage company was filmed, let him have a drive of his truck.

Arnie had just turned twenty-one and that drive was to change his life. He enjoyed the experience so much that he took a week of work and signed up for a five-day Class 1 driving course, passed his test and after many applications (because, as usual, nobody wanted to take on an inexperienced driver) landed a job driving aircraft refuelling tankers at Gatwick.

Arnie managed to save enough from his wages to buy an old F12, and after rebuilding the ageing Volvo he was on the road as an owner-driver working for the Hammond Group.

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