TALL TIMBER
Two recently retired Nelson Forests log truck drivers look back with pleasure on their long careers.
Log truck drivers are among the unsung heroes of the forestry industry. This group of hard workers is essential in keeping the wood flowing from the forest to the mill or wharf. In this issue, we celebrate two drivers who collectively have 94 years behind the wheel.
THIS YEAR SAW THE RETIREMENT OF TWO OF NELSON Forests’ longest-serving log truck drivers – Gary Gardiner of Waimea Contract Carriers and Peter Friend from Stuart Drummond Transport.
With a combined total of ninety-four years behind the wheel, there’s not a lot these two haven’t seen.
And while many changes have come and gone over time – not least the rigs and regulations – one thing has clearly never wavered: their infectious love for the log trucking life.
Gary first hit the road as a twenty-year-old in the mid-1960s, saying: “I cut my teeth in the industry over in Collingwood with Sollys. They had a fleet of Bedfords and I drove every one of them.”
In the ‘70s Gary began driving for Irvines on general freight. “They were different times back then,” he laughs. “Like when the rail was out – we could easily put in 18-to-20-hour days! I think my longest stint was a run from Nelson to Christchurch, to Blenheim, back to Christchurch, down to Invercargill and back again to Christchurch.”
In 1981 Gary switched to wood. He welcomed the change, adding: “By that time I was sick of freight, of working under covers. My very first job, as a young man, had been in a sawmill, so I’d always had a connection to timber. Besides, I’m a deerstalker, hunter and fisherman – I love the outdoors. Carting logs seemed a pretty good idea.”
Gary drove with Radiata Transport for the NZ Forest Service and says: “I was mainly carrying native Beech, plus some pine leftovers out of the Golden Downs.
“As time went by I worked for TNL and Peter Gibbons. In 1998, I went to Waimea Contract Carriers and never looked back.”
With an impressive fifty years of experience, Gary has a unique perspective on how the industry has developed.
“To my mind, the biggest changes have been with the quality of the trucks themselves. Innovations such as higher stanchions, with no extension or pop-up pins. Lowering the suspension allowed for their greater height. It kept drivers off the back of trucks. This was around the year 2000, and was a big move in Health and Safety.”
Gary recalls an industry-wide consultation process that brought further health and safety improvements, like the shift to lighter chains, which “went from 7mm down to 5-6mm, easier to throw over”.
Another change was the move from using twitches.
“We called them racks,” he says, “because you’d rack down the load (to winches). Winches gave us tighter, safer loads, with less risk of losing logs.”
Perhaps, from a pure driving point of view, some of the greatest changes Gary recalls were in horsepower and suspension.
”Horsepower effectively doubled,” he says. “We needed that grunt – it allowed our payloads to go up from 23 tonnes to 34, and made it easier for us to get out of the forest tracks.”
Meanwhile, improved truck and cab suspension was another welcome development.