Rod’s truck is his home office
ROD Hannifey credits his wife Judy for being an integral part of a decades-long partnership which has enabled the couple to so proudly raise seven kids, even though it’s been tough on them both, in very different ways.
He began his married life driving fuel tankers for the money, which meant he could afford to pay the incessant bills and allow Judy to be a full-time mother when the children were young, the couple deciding they’d rather work things that way than have both parents working full time.
“If you’ve got both parents working it’s not necessarily the best thing for your kids and the job that I had at the time driving tankers meant that she could stay home and look after them and I’ve always said to my children, the one thing that I think you must understand is that I did this specifically so that one of us was here all the time,” Mr Hannifey told Dubbo Photo News.
“My wife has done such an incredible job in bringing them up on her own, and it’s rarely recognised but if I hadn’t done that job then she would have had to work or we wouldn’t have had what we have now. You’ve got to find that middle ground that works for you and it’s bloody hard to do in this job.”
He said there’s been plenty of heart-wrenching episodes when he’s been unable to help, recalling a phone call years ago from Judy who let him know a tree had fallen on the house and smashed a window during a big storm.
“I was a thousand kilometres away going in the wrong direction and I wasn’t going to be home for three or four days, it’s hard enough for any wife with a brood of kids and a husband at work but you imagine when your partner goes away for two days and then rings out of the blue and says they won’t be home for another four or five, and that happens every week,” he said.
“Normally I leave Dubbo on Sunday and get home Saturday and it puts an enormous stress on the family and the people who survive that, they’re few and far between and they’re pretty special people.”
The million-dollar question – When you’re driving a truck on
Father’s Day, what’s going through your head?
“Why am I doing this? Why aren’t I at home? Look, the kids are pretty good, they don’t really put the guilt on you, occasionally something will come up ‘oh, you weren’t there that day’ and you think about it and think, well no, I wasn’t, but you know where I was, I wasn’t off doing something on my own,” Mr Hannifey explained, although as a father he can’t help but think of all the priceless family moments he’s missed over the years.
“I talked to a bloke a little while ago and he’s been out of the industry 10 years and he said he still carries the guilt of the times that he wasn’t there, because you’re never home,” he said.
“It’s really hard, I’ve always tried to instil in my kids that somebody’s got to work, somebody’s got to pay the bills and yes, I’m away, but I’m thinking of them and we talk on the phone, they all did trips in the truck when they were younger.
“Phones are good, that’s the one thing that we have now that we never had when I first started, years ago. You’d go away for two weeks and you might find a phone somewhere to ring up and say you won’t be home for a week. You’ve got the phone in the truck now and it’s all set up on handsfree of course, so at least you can have contact, I know some blokes who talk to their kids and wish them goodnight every night when they’re really young.”