LIFETIME TRUCKER LIFETIME TEACHER
Good teachers are always better if they have the life experience to draw on. Listening to Storm’s father Ellie Harrison recount his truck driving career, there is no chance of you falling asleep at the back of the classroom.
It started back in Ruatoria in the early 1970s after leaving school, driving an old Leyland Albion tipper. “Roger Campbell of Campbell Draglines was the boss. I was about 16 years old, and yeah, we would go down to the Waiapu River and self-load with a digger, then take the rock down beside the main road to the crusher,” says Ellie.
“From there, I moved down to Napier and spent time with my uncle – Robbie Fraser at Freightways, who had a 3070 International with a 903 Cummins in it. It was a cool-sounding truck, and that’s where I really got into it. I ended up doing a couple of years there, learning the ropes and doing a heap of relief driving for all the ownerdrivers.
“After this, it was into the logging, with my first job working for the late Bill Paul. He was a great boss; I have huge respect for Bill. I was driving a 130hp petrolpowered TK Bedford one night. I was loaded coming down a hill and around a corner, and bang, I hit about 100 sheep on the road in one hit. I stopped and was in shock because it turned out it was a farmer shifting the flock in the dark. Why would you do that?
“After working with Bill, I got a job with Colin Taylor at Taylor Brothers. First up, I had one of those 237 slab cab Macks, then got given a 350 Cummins-powered S-line. That was a big move… And the room!
“Not long after this, I was at the pub and got chatting to Gordon Duffy, who was one of the bosses at Pan
Pac and looked after the transport side. I sort of hinted at him that I was looking for a job, and he said, ‘How old are you?’ I said ‘23’, and he said, ‘You can’t have a job there until you are 25.’ Back then, there was a big lineup of guys trying to get into Pan Pac. It was considered one of the best driving jobs in New Zealand. I hounded and hounded the shit out of him, and then he gave up and said, ‘I’ll tell ya what, I’ll give you a trial on the bulk run to the port, and we’ll see how good you are. If you’re any good, I’ll keep you on.’ So, I went along there and trialled out, and with that, he gave me the opportunity to start there at 23 years old. That was 1977, and it all sort of stemmed from there.
“Around that time, Pan Pac had about 10 of their old LW Kenworths lined up in the truck park, ready to be sold off. This guy, Stan Shotten, came up to me. He was in charge of the workshop, and he said to me, ‘Go out there and have a look at those trucks and pick one out that you fancy. We will get it in here, and we’ll do some work on it.’ Well, they completely rebuilt it for me. They took the 350 Cummins out of it and put a 385hp Cat in it – just completely rebuilt it, did a massive job on it. Warren Clark was the workshop foreman at the time, and he did all the work – a top mechanic.”
After six years on No.91, Ellie was offered a contract to go owner-driver, running the export timber squares to the port. An ex-Scotts Transport T2670 (T-line) was sitting at TruckStops and, after some negotiation, became Ellie’s first tuck as an OD.
“I have to really thank my darling wife Janine for all her support over the years. The owner-driver business would
not have happened without that support. It was a team effort,” says Ellie.
Eventually, the T-line needed some work, so with the help of Mark Wilson at DPS Trucks in Napier, it was rebuilt, upgraded from 350 to 400hp. “She just purred after that,” says Ellie. He took the T-line out to near 900,000km, and by then, it was time to look for a replacement.
DPS in Napier was the local dealer for Mitsubishi, and Ellie had a good working relationship with the team. Following some discussion, he placed an order for a new 400 twin-turbo Shogun.
“That truck was awesome. It did 700,000km and never had a spanner at it – just normal service and oil, but no repairs. Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” says Ellie.
This Mitsubishi paved the way for expansion, with another Shogun taking up a log opportunity Ellie was offered by Pan Pac.
As time moved on, and with 600hp rapidly becoming the norm, Ellie found he was getting in the way, so a move into an R580 Scania was the next step.
“I had Marshall Hope, ex-Road Freighters, double-shifting the truck with me. He would start it up on a Sunday night and I would turn it off again the following Saturday. We worked it 24 hours a day, non-stop. We did nearly 250,000km in the first 10 months. That was local work, too, not like staying away on linehaul, Auckland to Wellington. It was just between here and Tokoroa and here and Masterton. Again, it was a great truck that we never put a spanner to.” As with the Mitsubishis, the Scania’s record paved the way for additional representation from the Swedish marque’s ranks.
However, everything runs its course in time, and in 2008, a change of scenery beckoned.
Ellie jumped across the ditch for a four-year stint, running freight in B-triple road trains from Sydney to Perth.
“It was good for a while, but there wasn’t really any challenge once you got used to it,” he says. He decided to move back home again, although there was to be no rest.
Good mate Ray Beale found out that Ellie was back in town, and he was on the phone quick smart to get Ellie’s assistance driving a wheel loader while one of Ray’s operators was away.
Then it was a call from Aaron Hamilton, with an offer for Ellie to go back on log cartage. Ellie was back in the cab, this time behind the wheel of a Freightliner Argosy.
“Aaron sold the business to
Nick Redmond (NLR Cartage) in 2014, and when he took over, he asked me to stay on with the truck. So I did.” Now, with Ellie at 66, there is a new Scania on its way. “Nick says it’s for me! I told him, ‘Nah, you might want to give it to one of the younger fellas.’ He was like, ‘No way; it’s for you.’
“Ah, we’ll see,” chuckles Ellie. As the saying goes, you can’t keep a good man down.
the air starter when he fired it up, as well as looking out over that massive bonnet. Yeah, good times,” says Storm.
In 1998, at 17, Storm enlisted with the army and completed his basic training. From there, it was straight into the infantry battalion and on to active duty in the likes of East Timor, Sinai, Israel, and Egypt. The Antarctic also features in Storm’s deployment resume.
After active service, Storm spent a little time back at home. But the call for more adventure soon grew too strong to ignore, and he headed for the Australian outback.
“I thought I’d have a crack at the mines and ended up there for four years, working for Jamieson Transport out of Port Hedland. They were awesome to work for. It was all pretty much whanau, too – 99% Kiwis. The boss, Jamo, himself an Aussie, was just like, ‘I want Kiwis. If you’re an Aussie and ya can’t get a job, then you shouldn’t be living here.’ He is a good man, Jamo.
“I drove an old Mack Titan, a 2007 one, big sleeper on it, 620 Cummins-powered tri-drive. That was a good truck. I ended up running the show for a year, and that is where the networking came in. I’d ring up the boys back over here and say, ‘Do you want to come over here and have a go on the road trains? Quads, 175-tonne, fly in, fly out… good money?’ That’s how we networked. We had heaps of army boys over, too, people in the same boat as me, struggling, who didn’t know where they fitted in with civilian life after active service. Being in the mines was like where we’d been. You were in a camp, so it was like a military environment. Like on a mini deployment. You were flying out to an isolated place, so for them it was like going back to Afghanistan or East Timor. It was similar; we sort of fitted in alright over there. Even now, loads of the brothers are still over there working for Jamo.”
Returning to New Zealand was all about settling down and being closer to whanau for Storm.
“It’s a good thing for me having these trucks now. I’m busy all the time, so I can start phasing out the military side of things because it’s been 20 years now. I can start focussing on the next chapter – on the family. It’s good being home every night, and after every first round, now I drop in at home for breakfast with the kids and help Mummy get them ready for school. I could never do that before.”
The connection to the Kenworth and Caterpillar combination for Storm came from many experiences growing up in and around the Pan Pac brethren. Ellie and Storm Hema worked for Pan Pac – Ellie on fleet No.91, an LW Kenworth working the port run, and Storm as a contract owner-driver, initially on his old W-model Kenworth ‘Pink Panther’ before the famous Mack Super-Liners.
Long-time family friend Joe Young also had a new-flat roof Kenworth K100G. “Uncle Joe took me under his wing, teaching me how to drive,” says Storm. “It was a Cat fitted with BrakeSaver, and the cab interior was that dark brown with the buttons, and I remember thinking ‘Is that real leather?’ As you get older, you know that it’s not leather, but it was a cool look.
“Then, there were the times where Dad was off the Pan Pac work, and he would drive for the likes of Cliff Hair in his W-model and Grant Robbie’s T900. For me, that’s the oldschool look of the brown
interior and big bonnet, and with Angels Share, that’s what she’s got – Kenworth, Cat, and BrakeSaver, with the brown interior and a bonnet.
“It was funny when I bought the Angels Share. I told
Dad, and he was like, ‘Ya silly fool! You should’ve got a Freightliner.’ But when he saw it and sat in it for the first time, he was like, ‘Too much, my boy. This is just like Uncle Storm’s old one.’ So yeah, it really fits what is special to me, and brings back all the memories.”
As important as memories were in the Angels Share purchase and inclusion in the Ngati Haulage fleet, she still must reliably go out and earn a crust. Twenty years later, and three owners deep, the thought Mike, Calvin, and Graham put into the trucks’ spec all those years ago is still paying dividends today.
Storm immediately knew it was the perfect machine for his application. Based on his experience at Jamieson Transport back in WA, the fact the unit was the age it was did not deter him one bit.
“Yeah, what I learnt at Jamo’s was that one of their trucks had, like, more than 6,000,000km on the clock. It was an old Mack Titan. It had been to the moon and back three or four times.
But what they did was strip it down to chassis and cab, new diffs, new engine and gearbox, and get it back out there for another million. That made me think, ‘You know? Angels Share is not that old really, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll just keep doing it up. Oh, and never sell her’,” Storm says with a laugh. And seriously? Why would you?