The record
Where the Perentie 4×4 was rated at one tonne, the three-axle version doubled it. The General Service cargo truck, liability code 74800 (74810 with a winch), was designed to move two tonnes of stores or up to fifteen people — three in the cab and twelve in the rear on bench seats fitted facing outwards along the tray sides — over sealed roads, second-class roads and cross-country, with a trailer of up to 900 kg behind and a range of about 600 km on good surfaces. Road registration allowed only the three cab seats to be occupied on public roads.
The body itself is deliberately unremarkable: a long steel tray on the extended chassis, hoops, and a canvas tilt. Its significance is structural rather than visual. REMLR notes that the ambulance and general maintenance modules mount on the chassis 'in the same manner as the cargo tray body' — the tray is the baseline fitment, and the enclosed fibreglass modules of the ambulance, workshop and repair variants (see `perentie6-hard` and `perentie6-ambulance`) are alternatives bolted to the same points. Strip a module off a 6×6 and what remains is this vehicle. That interchangeability is also why the cargo chassis turns up under specialist loads it was never catalogued for: satellite terminal assemblies, engineer stores, and unit-improvised fitouts, with the tilt left off entirely.
The build numbers are the most contested in the whole Perentie programme, and the registry records the disagreement rather than resolving it. Wikipedia's variant table gives 215 cargo trucks plus 32 with winch. REMLR's own page on the type states 'Number Built: 231 and 59 with Winch'. REMLR's ARN register, compiled from Army registration ledgers, lists 235 and 57. The three sources agree only that this was the commonest 6×6 body, somewhere between a third and two-fifths of the 699 (or so) 6×6s built. REMLR adds a useful explanation for part of the spread: the cargo trucks were predominantly built under the original Perentie contract, but some winch-equipped examples came later under the Project Bushranger contract, so where a counter draws the line between programmes changes the total. 4X4 Australia complicates it further by dating Perentie production to May 1986 – September 1992 with a further licence-built run by BAeA in 1996–98; the registry records that claim without endorsing it.
Underneath, the 6×6 is a serious piece of Australian engineering rather than a stretched 110. JRA Limited at Moorebank, New South Wales built it on a widened, hot-dip galvanised chassis with twin rear axles, permanent four-wheel drive and selectable six-wheel drive for difficult going, with helicopter sling, shipping tie-down and recovery points designed in. Power came from the turbocharged Isuzu 4BD1-T 3.9-litre diesel — the naturally aspirated engine of the 4×4 would not have carried two tonnes. Deliveries began in March 1989, three months short of two years after the 4×4s, and the Moorebank plant closed on 30 September 1992.
Cargo 6×6s left the line in lustreless Australian Olive Drab and were progressively repainted into the three-colour Auscam disruptive scheme of olive drab, tan and black through the 1990s; vehicles sent on United Nations service were painted overall white. They served through Somalia, Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan before the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon replaced the fleet under Project Land 121 from around 2012. Being the plainest and most numerous 6×6, the cargo truck is also the one most often seen in civilian hands, usually with the tray rebuilt into a camper or expedition body.
