Short answers, pulled from the story.
Karl Benz designed and built the first internal combustion truck in 1895. That same year, some of his trucks were modified into buses by Netphener. A year later, Gottlieb Daimler introduced his own model, the Daimler Motor Lastwagen.
Truck is the standard term in North American and Australian English, while lorry is used in British English for medium and heavy vehicles. The word lorry appears in written records from 1838 in the rail transport industry, while truck in its motor-vehicle sense dates from 1901 as a shortening of "motor truck."
Benz introduced diesel engines in production trucks in 1923, though the engine itself had been invented in 1897. Diesel remained rare in European trucks until the 1930s, and gasoline engines were still used on heavy American trucks into the 1970s.
Australia permits some of the largest road combinations in the world. A B-double can weigh 62.5 tonnes and be 25 metres long, while road trains used in the outback can reach 172 tonnes and 53.5 metres in length.
A commercial driver's license is required for any commercial vehicle weighing 26,001 pounds or more. Federal rules allow 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour on-duty window, followed by 10 hours off, with a maximum of 70 hours over 8 days or 60 hours over 7 days.
Road damage from a vehicle axle is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight, a principle measured by the Load Equivalency Factor. A ten-ton axle therefore causes 10,000 times the pavement wear of a one-ton axle, which is why commercial trucks pay higher road use taxes than passenger cars.