“Memories like that I’ll never let go of”
carting bulk metal.”
Bob reckons that he’d probably still be there – but in 1971 he’d not long got married, and the McLennans job meant “I was away from home for too long… So I swapped to logging – which got me home every night.”
He started driving for Radiata Transport, carting logs pretty much all around the top of the South Island, initially at the wheel of an old Leyland AEC. He quickly got an upgrade – to a 1972 ERF CU 310 and then to the first of two Kenworths that have long since become iconic survivors of the era: A Cumminsengined 1973 LW 924 6x4 nicknamed BlueMule.
It had been bought brand-new by Pan Pac in Hawke’s Bay and then moved down to Nelson where another Radiata Transport driver, “Neil Ford, got it new – then he got promoted to an office job and I took over from him.” He laughs about Ford’s “bad luck” and his good fortune.
When he got it the KW was still in its green and orange
Pan Pac colours: Bob saw a movie – “can’t remember what the name of it was, but it had this LW with BlueMule on it.” He suggested it to the boss as a great name for his truck – and that’s been its nickname ever since…even now it’s been restored to as-new condition by current owner Steve Hill.
Bob went from BlueMule to a brand-new 1977 Kenworth W924 6x4 that initially went to work with a t wo-axle pole trailer….but then went in f ront of the second logging B-train put to work in the South Island.
¬¬More importantly, driving that meant “better money – I got good money with it. The rate went up because it was classed as two trailers – more or less.”
Bob’s nephew Hayden Perry, who rode alongside his Uncle Bob many times when he was a kid and credits him with inspiring his own career as a truckie, says that a truck driver mate he now works with in Western Australia reckons Bob was one of his childhood heroes.
Says Perry: “He went to school on the West Coast. He says that back in the day the kids knew all the Radiata Transport trucks and TNL ones by their sounds.
“When they heard Bob coming the call would go out: ‘Here comes Bob and the B-train!’ – and they’d all run to the fence to see him go by. It was a big bit of gear in its day.”
Bob reckons: “There’s a lot of shit I’ve forgotten eh – f rom the good days.”
So nephew Hayden provides a few prompters, says that his Uncle Bob “has taught me a lot…..I have a lifetime of memories with him.”
And he suggests: “Ask him about how they used to tow themselves up onto the skids with the loader in the early hours of the morning – by themselves. The young blokes these days
wouldn’t believe it!”
Duly prompted, Bob explains: Early one morning in the Maruia Forest, “when I had the B-train, I couldn’t get up this hill to a skid – it was a straight climb, only about 50 yards up onto the skid….but quite steep and I couldn’t get up.
“So I run up the hill and they had an old Hough 70 ( loader) – and they had a hand throttle in them.
“So I hooked up the chain to the loader, put it in gear, pulled the hand-throttle out a bit and then I r un back to the truck, jumped in, released the brake, stuck it in gear and just crawled up the hill.”
Hayden, now 45 and driving a Kenworth K200 triple roadtrain in Western Australia – c arting mostly grain, lime and fertiliser – recalls one experience he had alongside his Uncle Bob: “One trip I remember was in 1985. We went down the West Coast to Mawheraiti, south of Reefton – in the days when the beech logging was hitting its stride.
“Bob had the B-train then….he went up the bush track, turned her around at the bottom of a hill and had to back up the hill onto the skid as it was too small to turn around.
“On the skid they had a small traxcavator loader (a bulldozer with logging forks) that loaded us. Bob lifted me up on the back of the headboard behind the cab and we sat up on top and watched him load us. Memories like that I’ll never let go of.
“Bob wouldn’t realise it, but most of what I learnt f rom him, I learnt f rom a young age: I try to keep my truck clean outside…inside is always on point: Everything’s in its place. Just little things I picked up over the years.”
Mention of all this does spark other memories for Bob: “There is one that comes to mind. After I went off the LW onto the W, my mate Chris Hutchison took it (the LW) over – and we used to do the West Coast peeler run, from Nelson to the peeler factory in Greymouth. Then come up through Reefton, to Springs Junction, load up with native and then bring it back home here.
“Anyhow, this particular day we went down and come back to Reefton, where we stopped to have a feed. And these jokers come in and said: ‘You jokers have gotta park your trucks up. We’re gonna take your keys.’ And we told ‘em to ‘f*** off,’ you know.
“Anyhow they said: ‘Didn’t you fullas know you’re on strike?’– because the Drivers’ Union was on strike.”
But, as employees of a forest and mill owner, the Nelson Pine Forest drivers weren’t actually employed as truck drivers. So, says Bob laughing, “we said ‘no, that’s got f***-all to do with us….because we’re timber workers’ (who, he says now, got more money). We just jumped in our trucks and f****ed off!”
The terrain he worked in was nothing if not challenging: “There’s one job that I c an remember in the 1980s. It wasn’t a bad job – it was just that we got stranded.
“We were carting out of the Maruia Forest at Station Creek (about 180 kilometres southwest of Nelson). That was when I
was with Radiata and I had that W Model. It pissed down as we were going in, and by the time we loaded and started to come out the rivers had come up – and we couldn’t get back out.
“We were lucky there was a truck on the other side of the river and there was a tree that we could scramble over. Otherwise they were going to send a chopper in to get us.” The trucks had to stay there the night – till the river dropped.
Another time he and maybe half a dozen other truckies got stuck in snow on the top of the Hope Saddle: “We lit a bonfire – warmed ourselves up, sat around and had a chat. The fire was good – plenty of diesel in the tanks!” They got towed out the next morning.
“There were a lot of things happen in the old days – but ahh, you’d need a whole book to fit them all in! They were good days the old days – just the men you worked with.”
Like “the best boss I ever had – Kevin Steel, the boss of Nelson Pine Forest: “You know how you used to clock-in in the old days? Well …..I’d poke the card in only half way – so it’d stamp the time, but didn’t stamp the date.
“So I’d stamp in for a week – because I’d start the same time anyway. The deputy-boss saw…and he went and told Kevin Steel.
“So this particular day I was knockin’ off and Kevin Steel come over in his car. He called me over, told me to get in his car. The deputy boss was watching and Kevin said to me: ‘Just make it look like I’m telling you off! And carry on with what you’re doing.’ He was a bloody good boss eh – he knew I was bloody doing my job properly.”
He recalls his “early years” with passion: “All the old fellas were good buggers. You looked up to them. Totally different to today – you had a lot of respect for your elders and you learnt a lot off them.
“There was one old fella, Ward Higgins, who drove for
Radiata Transport. He was real good eh – he taught me a lot. He was a guy that could jump into any make or model of truck and run it smooth. Gearchanges, everything….just smooth.
“The funny thing about it, his grandson Kevin Smith now is into trucking here – as an O/D with the container trucks. He used to come for a r ide with me as a kid! Now I think he’s got about three or four trucks with TNL. I said to him: ‘If you’re half as good as your Granddad, you’ll be a champion.’ ”
Speaking of champions, Bob says there were some “big-gun” drivers in the area back in the day: “They always used to win New Zealand driving contests, so we had a lot to look up to and learn from. They set the standard and that’s what you had to reach to get to the top.”
He doesn’t mention it, but nephew Hayden lets us that Bob was named Nelson’s 1995LoggingTruckDriveroftheYear – an award he shrugs off.
In 1985, Bob got out of the W924 (which has been restored and is now in J. Swap Contractors colours) and took over the steering wheel of a new Volvo N12. Another change was the name on the door – the old Radiata Transport name having been ditched in favour of Nelson Pine Forest when TNL bought the business (and the local woodchip mill) during Bob’s time in