What are the chances that anyone reading this write up is a fan of the 1998 romantic comedy ‘Sliding Doors’? I’m guessing it is fairly close to minimal chances. If you are a huge Gwyneth Paltrow fan, or maybe a John Hannah fan, then you’ll know the movie, but more than likely if you were, you wouldn’t be sitting in a truck stop reading an article on DAFs, hence I am guessing many of you won’t get the ‘Sliding Doors’ reference. Let me break it down for you because, like a good husband, I sacrificed a John Wick movie night for 1 hour and 44 minutes of romcom rubbish. The premise of the movie is based around how one little incident can lead to a very different future. One choice can lead you down very different roads.
How does all this segue into the fine-looking DAF XF530 you see before you? For that I will take you back to early 2003 when Dean Lucas was looking to purchase his first brand new truck.
“I rang Brown and Hurley in Darra to get a price for a twin steer, bogie drive set up, just thinking about a Kenworth,” Dean recalls.
“When I got the price, I thought it was quite a good deal, I checked it all out again and then noticed it was for a DAF. The receptionist had given my number to one of the DAF salesmen rather than a Kenworth guy. It was such a good price that I couldn’t not get it.”
That miscommunication over 20 years ago has led to a decades long love of the PACCAR product for Dean and his family. It has led to a fleet with nearly 70 per cent of the trucks wearing the DAF badge and it has led to arguably one of Australia’s coolest looking Dutch creations in D & M Lucas Transport’s Hells Bells XF530.
Before we look at Dean and his impressive fleet, I think it is worth a bit of a history lesson when it comes to the legendary Dutch DAF brand. Yes, the country known for its fields of colourful tulips, windmills and Amsterdam’s infamous red light district is the home to the ever-innovative DAF truck brand.
When it comes to the trucking industry, DAF has a pretty decent history behind it. Its centenary celebrations are only a couple of years away – 2028 will mark 100 years since Dutchman Huburt ‘Hub’ van Doorne and A H Huenges began van Doorne’s Aanhangwagon Fabriek Van Doorne’s Trailer Factory. Yes, they started as a trailer manufacturer, and with a little creative licence we could say DAF started over a cold beer in the pub. The creative licence comes from the fact Hubs’ co-founder and investor was the managing director of a brewery, which I am going to assume Hub drank at for the sake of this story. In reality, Hub worked on A H Huenges’ cars and was doing such a good job that the brewery man offered to help get Hub into his own business.
Over the years the brewery owner sold out and Hub’s brother Wim bought in. When the name was changed to van Doorne’s Automobiel Fabriek (van Doorne’s Automobile Factory) they moved from repairs and conversions to designing and building their own trucks, starting in 1949 with the DAF A30 – a three-tonne workhorse designed for the Dutch local market.
The family owned company only grew from there. Over the years DAF has become a leading innovator within the transport industry – in the late ‘50s it was one of the lead manufacturers responsible for adding turbo chargers to its engines. In the early ‘70s it was the first to introduce turbo intercooling technology and a decade later pioneered Advance Turbo Intercooling.
The DAF brand also broke new ground with its cab design as well. In 1962 the DAF2600 was the first European truck that could be spec’d with a fully-fledged sleeper cab. In the mid ‘80s it revolutionised the European market again with the new ‘SpaceCab’ and then the bigger ‘Super Spacecab’.
All of this is a long way from Australian shores, and although there was some imported DAFs in Australia early on, they never officially entered Australian shores until the 1990s. DAF’s reputation for efficiency, comfort and durability made it an appealing option for Australian operators. In 1996, when DAF Trucks became a part of PACCAR, it gained more popularity with an even larger global presence and, in Australia in particular, it allowed the brand to leverage the extensive dealer and service network that PACCAR and Kenworth had already established.
All of this history helps with the DAF story and the DAF product, but we need to get back to the impressive XF530 on the pages before you, and how a misplaced note from a receptionist led to a DAF affiliation that has been going on for over 20 years now.
Like many good folks in our industry, Dean’s origin story started back in the land of the Long White Cloud. Yes, that is a little Kiwi parochialism. Dean’s truckie childhood was limited to helping his old man deliver soft drinks from the back of the old Bedford he owned, or from riding around Auckland in one of his uncle’s trucks.
Once he shifted over to Australia when he was 13, the trucking life gave way to schooling and then landscaping work. Eventually the landscaping work reignited the truck driving bug for the young man.
“I got my truck licence when I was 20 and was doing landscaping work, but never really started driving until I was 22 and was allowed to drive the tipper at the landscape mob,” Dean says.
“My job wasn’t to drive there, but whenever I got a chance I would have a drive. I didn’t really know much to start, it was an old T-line with a 13 speed box, and I just had to learn it on the run. I did love the driving and doing the tipper stuff though.”
Luckily the landscape work was very sporadic – I say luckily because Dean’s move from landscaping to working with his brother delivering plaster board is the catalyst for his success now.
“My brother had a job hand delivering plaster board to site and his boss wanted to put on a second truck. So, I got the job driving that truck, which was a Hino, and my brother was my off sider,” he says.
“It was driving that truck that got me thinking about having my own truck one day.”
That day would come about a year later when the company Dean and his brother were working for wanted to get rid of their trucks and delegate the work exclusively to subbies. It didn’t take much for the hardworking young man to be convinced and back himself.
“The plasterboard place helped set me up – they gave me the truck, a Ford Cargo that they had been running, they’d pay me per square metre, pay me weekly and just deduct $500 for the truck,” he says.
“It was great because at 24 I wouldn’t have been able to get finance myself.”
That was back in 1993 and was officially the creation of D & M Lucas Transport (the M is the marvelous Maree, Dean’s very tolerant wife). For the next seven years, Dean worked tirelessly with that old Ford Cargo, keeping his customers happy and paying off the truck as quick as he could. His business acumen surpassed only by his work ethic.
By 2000 his job performance saw more and more opportunities opening up.
“I did buy a trailer to put behind the Cargo because, by then, I was covering two stores, but it was too much for the Cargo to pull,” Dean laughs.
This led to Dean’s next truck, a P113 Scania.
“I traded the Ford in on the Scania and got a great deal,” he says.
“The Scania had to be stretched, get a deck put on and a ring feeder added so it could tow the trailer.”
That Scania and trailer was the turning point for D & M Lucas Transport. All of a sudden, their work ethic and experience with their niche market saw the work requests piling up. It meant a second truck was soon purchased in a second-hand Volvo FL7 that Dean put his brother behind the wheel of.
From a Ford Cargo to a 113 Scania and now a Volvo FL7, in its formative years the D & M Lucas fleet had no brand affiliation.
“I never really had any preference for truck brands back then, it really was just about what was affordable,” he admits as he reflects on the menagerie of manufacturers he had in the beginning.
Unknowingly that would change with the purchase of D & M Lucas’ third truck in early 2003 – Dean’s first ever DAF in a second-hand 1987 DAF 3300.
“It was a really good truck, it could go,” he recalls.
“It didn’t really like the hills, but it was a good truck.”
Roll on the end of 2003 and D & M Lucas Transport was in a position to buy its first new truck, and Dean had his eye on getting the iconic Australian Kenworth badge to join the fleet. That is where we hit the ‘Sliding Doors’ moment for Dean. If the note had been handed to a different salesman, this could be a very different story.
“I always wanted a Kenworth, because that was the thing to have,” he confesses, but after over 20 years of DAFs through the fleet, he admits he is glad it was DAF salesman Maurie Brown that appeared.
“One of the best things has been the relationship we’ve had with the salesmen at Darra. We dealt with Maurie Brown first and now Matt King up at Caboolture,” he says.
“The DAFs are good for what we do, they have a good turning circle, they are comfortable, which is good. The drivers can be waiting around a lot, so it is good for them to have somewhere to lay down if they need to.”
Dean also sends high praise for the reliability and efficiency of his DAF collection – an important aspect in any transport business these days. Longevity has never been an issue at D & M Lucas Transport as Dean is the first to admit they don’t really clock up that many kilometres.
“On average they probably only do around 80,000 kilometres a year. It’s mainly local stuff, with the odd trip away,” he says.
The big XF530 that drew my eye is a long way from the original ‘Sliding Doors’ DAF that kicked off the DAF delirium D & M Lucas now seems wrapped up in.
“The first one was just white, very basic,” Dean admits as I question him about the pimping out progress of his trucks.
“As I’ve bought more, my thinking has gone from just trucks that make money to trucks that make money but look really cool as well.”
That change in thought process began in 2012 when Dean purchased an ex-Brisbane Truck Show DAF demo and, along with a lovely colour scheme, there were stainless guards fitted as well.
“I just thought the stainless guard looks so much better than the other ones, and they are actually cheaper,” he says.
Since that day, each new DAF purchase has seen more and more being done to each truck, leading to 2024 when Dean ordered the big XF530.
“Our fleet doesn’t have a set colour, I like to mix it up, even our logo changes colour based on the truck. I tend to pick colours of cars I like,” he says.
“This one here is actually red, but it looks so different depending on the day. On overcast days it looks a different shade compared to sunny, even the panels can look different. It has been described as pink, salmon and red. At nights with the red lights on it can look bronze.”
It was Dean who picked the colour and he also chose gold paint for the extras, notably the handle, the light bar, the front grill and the DAF badging.
“Every truck we try and do a little more, with this one we got the visor painted, added the light bar, added a heap of extra light. We also got the deck plating customised and built a whole new rear bar for it. It’s modelled off the Mack we have,” he says.
“There are also the compulsory stainless guards that kicked off this customising bug back in 2012, as well as painted tanks, tank skirts and lights and all the badging being removed and painted gold to match the other gold highlights.
“The cab was painted before it left the workshop in Eindhoven and then PJs did all the extra bits over here, like painting the tanks.”
Dean adds the painted tanks are just to avoid having to polish them.
“We also go with Dura-Bright rims, just to make it easier for the drivers to keep them clean and looking good,” he says.
The end result of all this forethought is an extremely cool looking set-up. The Europeans have had nearly 100 years to perfect a picturesque DAF, while Australia have had less than half that time. Dean Lucas himself has had even less time and, in his voyage to create a hard-working truck that makes money and still looks good, he has created a near perfect masterpiece. His DAF XF530 may be the offspring of a Sliding Doors moment but there are no complaints. It earns its keep; it keeps the driver happy and it looks damn fine doing it. Sliding door closed.
Article reproduced courtesy of Onwer Driver Magazine (March 2026).
Writer: Warren Aitken