Advance Engineering and Fabricating Co

Adelaide, South Australia
by Mike Kudinoff

Editors Note: The Kudinoff family moved to Australia from California in 1966, and began building refuse trucks for their family hauling business at first. In 1968, they began to market their trucks regionally after moving to Perth, Western Australia. By 1971, operations had moved to Adelaide, South Australia for more centralized distribution throughout the country. The Kudinoff's brought Southern California front load designs to Australia at a time when they were scarcely found even in the eastern United States! The photos below will look very familiar.     Here are some trash trucks that we built in Adelaide, South Australia when we lived there. (now residing in California). I was 18 yrs old when I built for myself, the orange front loader in 1979. It was built on a early International with a small Cummins V8 & a 5 + 3 trans. It was a full pack with a front lift hopper cover, rear hydraulic door & solid welded formed channel beams.     My father moved the family to Western Australia in 1966. He built a front loader on a 2 axle gas powered Bedford truck, Built a route with it & sold the package. He then built another another front loader with another route & sold that package. And that is how he got started in the trash manufacturing industry.     He had his own trash truck & route in Los Angeles area before moving to Australia. Grandfather was doing trash pickup in the 1940s. As you can see, some aussie trucks had front twin steering axles. The Hino side loader truck was built for a company in Sydney NSW back in 1978. The side grabber arm was manual operated, because the automated hydraulics were not out at that time. Thanks, Mike. That Mack was the 1st truck built when we moved back. (at the 1983 Working Truck Show in Anaheim, CA) One of the first trucks hand-built by the Kudinoff family in Australia, circa 1966. Except for the Bedford TK series truck, this could easily be mistaken for a USA-built Bemars from the same era -Ed. Advance Engineering half-pack on a Mack cabover -Ed. 11/17/13 (revised 7/7/26) Photos by Mike Kudinoff Logos shown are the trademarks of respective manufacturers