PATHWAY AND PASSAGE
He was born into it’, ‘he was only ever going to be one thing’, you hear it often in trucking, and like fishing, farming, and forestry, it’s a vocation not a job. Looking at the family photo album, there’s not a shadow of doubt the Bennett driving legacy was alive and well in Kane. Through the pages, as each truck pops up, there’s Kane, growing bigger and bigger, proudly standing beside each new arrival.
As is often the case, it’s history repeating itself. Kane’s grandfather Gerald Bennett drove for Norm Andersen’s Andersen Transport at Mount Maunganui. He and his wife Hera had 12 children, including five truck-crazed boys.
“Dad didn’t want us to be truck drivers,” says Russell. “As kids, me, Murray, and Michael would meet the trucks after school when they were transferring stock at the old council depot after the Wednesday sale. We’d pair up with the drivers and go to Auckland and back, hose out, then straight to school again, smelling like stock trucks! We’d drive the trucks home sometimes while the drivers slept.
“Charlie, Wayne, Michael, me, we all worked at Andersens, it was only Murray who didn’t. He went to Jack Shaw Ltd.”
Russell started a timber machinist apprenticeship for CA Odlin out of school but that only lasted until he was 18; heavy traffic licence in hand, he was gone!
“I got my HT on a Friday afternoon and was in a truck Saturday morning.”
It was 1970, and he got his first driving job for Kirk and Graham driving a D-Series Ford delivering metal and building supplies around the Mount and Tauranga. From there, he went to Bitumen Distributors driving KH Bedfords and Commer ‘knockers’ before landing the job he wanted, on the stock trucks at Andersens.
“I loved the stock, it was all I wanted to do. Absolutely loved it. The trucks and the people, talking with the farmers, everything about it I just loved. Even now, if I go to the sale with a farmer mate of mine, they still remember me. It’s a great industry.”
But his brothers’ careers were also fanning out in all directions. Murray was working the big gear, a W-Model Kenworth at
Jack Shaw Ltd, and Wayne had found his way to the Hawkes Bay, accepted into the first intake of Pan Pac company drivers in 1971.
“You couldn’t start at
Pan Pac until you were
25. Wayne gave me an application when he was home for Christmas in ‘77 and I applied and got a job! I’d never been over the Napier Taupo or anything,” he laughs. “I started in early 1978. Alby Porteous interviewed me at his office located at on the 60/8 weighbridge on the Napier/ Taupo road. You spent two weeks with an experienced driver, and then a chap
named Gordon Duff rode with you and gave you your ‘wings’ as they said.
I’d only driven 5-speed/2speeds and I still wasn’t really confident with the Roadranger, or the road for that matter. When Gordon came on my assessment, I turned the heater off and wound the window down. In those old LW Kenworths the wind would come in, go behind the seat and freeze the passenger. Every time he commented, I’d just say, ‘No, don’t like heaters.’ Truth is, I was numb, and couldn’t feel my fingers or toes either. But he was so cold he couldn’t hear or concentrate on anything. He signed me off just to get out.
“It was an amazing place. Heavily unionised. You got all your gear, boots, gloves, the lot. Taxis or buses picked you up and took you to work. Two a day, Kaingaroa back to the Bay, day in day out.
“Talking about heaters, the Kenworths had rubbish heaters; they were useless. There was a clever bloke in the workshop and he put Simca car heaters in them. Mate, they were amazing!”
In 1985 he came back to the Bay of Plenty and started with Alf Walling driving an R-Model Mack, carting similar routes to what Kane does now. In time Walling’s was brought out by Mike Lambert Ltd.
“There was a lot of rivalry between the Lambert and Wallings drivers. Macks and Kenworths and all that. Lambert was always interested in comparing the two. One day he told me what my truck was earning, and I thought, ‘Hmmm? If I can do that for you, I can do it for myself’.”
It was on a run to the Hawke’s Bay doing a trial load in a Mack Super Liner towing an Evans folding bailey-bridge semi that Russell saw a Pan Pac
White Road Boss parked behind the Whirinaki mill with a for sale sign on it. The price was $65,000 and it had a fresh motor.
He and Tina took the plunge and Te Potiki came home. Of course, at this point, the origins of the famous Bennett Bronze and orange colour scheme have to be raised.
“I had a Ford F100 pickup, and it came from that. Ford Flair is the colour, and the orange’s code is KC48.
“The big players didn’t like the upstarts coming in, but there were people in Forest Corp at the time who believed there was room for an element of smaller operators just to keep the balance right.
“There was a lot on the line and I received encouragement from many people. My first load was for Fletchers from ‘Kuri’ to Napier, and Robbie Caulfield put my first tank of fuel in at 60/8. I’ll never forget that.
“Soon as we started though the port reform strikes happened and we were parked up for six-weeks. That’s character building, I can tell you!”
Things were trucking along nicely but continued manoeuvrings and murmuring in the background resulted in restructuring at Forest Corp and Russell and Tina were laid off. They had to sell their beloved Te Potiki.
All was not lost though. Long-time contractor Bruce King was wanting to exit his business and offered the Bennetts’ his R-Model Mack. Enter the scene Te Rehua. They were back in business. “One afternoon I had no job, half an hour later we were away again.”
Logging found itself in a slow patch in 1996 and with strength always in numbers, Russell and Tina were one of the 18 independents who formed Challenge Carrying Company. The next year the R-Model was replaced with a brand new V8 MH Mack, Te Wero, which means, ‘Challenge’.
The industry remained
a difficult proposition with export markets in a depressed state. Russell and two other Challenge contractors were assigned to Trevor Masters Ltd on a daily basis helping with pulp overflow off the Coromandel Peninsular to Kawerau.
“In time, the other two dropped off and I stayed on up there for 12 years — an experience I’ll never forget and wouldn’t trade. I loved every day of it. That road, the whole thing. I used to do one into Thames Timber, and then a pulp to Kawerau. I did that day in, day out.”
In early 2003, Russell’s brother Wayne came on board. Wayne’s journey had seen him take on a truck when Pan Pac changed from a fleet to an owner-driver model. In time he transferred to Forest Corp in the central North Island to be closer to family in the Bay of Plenty. Following restructuring at Forest Corp, he sold the truck and began working for Colin Sargison’s Rotorua Forest Haulage.
The story goes that Wayne, not driving at the time and recovering from ankle surgery, was having a beer at the Coroglen Tavern on the Eastern Coromandel with his mate Rex Colson, when they heard the unmistakeable thump thump of a V8 Mack approaching. Wayne commented on the beautiful sound, only to witness Te Wero blast on past with little brother at the helm. That was it! He wanted back in, right then.
Russell commissioned a Caterpillar powered Kenworth K104 for Wayne to drive, Taku Kai Tiaki, but within months tragedy struck with the untimely passing of Wayne at home in July of the same year.
“Wayne’s death hit me hard and I went into a really down state. Old Maori people would say I lost my mana. I sold the Kenworth and I guess you could say I just battled on and worked through it. It was a bloody hard time.
“Then in 2009, we bought the Cummins Signature powered Western Star
4884 FXI, Matariki. What a machine! Salesman Wayne Taia gave me a good price for the Mack; no one else would trade it. Today everyone wants them, back then when they were a dime-a-dozen, no one
would touch them.
“They were keen to raise the profile of the model at the time and Matariki certainly helped do that.
“Logging also took off about then. In hindsight, we should have bought three Stars knowing what we know now, but hey, hindsight and all that stuff.”
The family kept the truck busy with Russell working weekdays and nephew Duane the weekends. They’d feed Matariki the work and it was well up to the task.
“We turned the shells at a million kilometres and the mechanic then said ‘this thing is like new, it’s been driven well and had good oil. ‘Valvoline’ I said. That’s all I’ll run in my trucks, right from day one. You can’t beat it. That was a bit of a feather in the cap I thought. Kane had a look inside again at 1.4 million and same thing. Didn’t need anything doing.
“In 2017, the old body started to break down and Kane jumped in to help out, and eventually took over.” Russell starts to laugh and says, “I said ‘You talk to your mother, her price will be different to mine’.”
That brings us to today. Kane and Murray’s son Duane, who drives for Raymond Transport Ltd, are carrying the Bennett driving legacy into the next generation. It’s an amazing legacy and one that must be shown due respect, for it’s made up of great men and great machines in the heyday of an exploding road transport industry. From
what we witnessed, the legacy is in safe hands.
Interesting questions
When asked the questions most profitable truck and most reliable truck, Russell answers “Western Star the most reliable by a country mile. Just great machines.
“Tina will know the numbers side of things, she’s kept her finger on every dollar right from the beginning. She’s knows where every cent has gone.”
“Te Potiki was the best earner,” says Tina. “And yes then Matariki the most reliable. When logging was in the doldrums and there were all the rollovers going on in the
90s, earnings were down and insurance premiums almost unaffordable. Thank goodness times have changed, but it’s still a hard game. Right through our 30 years turnover has remained pretty static, it’s costs that have risen.”
Gratitude
Reflecting on his time at
Pan Pac, Russell asked if we could thank the following men. Maurice Jeffares, Robbie Caulfied, Percy Campbell, Alec Tautau, Damon Mako, Jethro O’Dywer, Peter Ebbett, and Barry Sinton.
“These blokes had my back and were so supportive of me in my fledgeling career. They taught me well.”