153. John Morris - Dubbo

0:00Copy Southbound just shut it off for a minute, man. I think this light's shifted. G'day everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Copy Southbound podcast. Copy Southbound is proudly supported by Chemworth Trucks Australia. Chemworth, Australia's hardest working trucks, designed and manufactured right here in Australia. Australian made, world's best. The podcast is also brought to you by NTI. NTI is a true Australian success story. From their humble beginnings nearly 50 years ago, to the national operation they are today. Proudly Australia's leading insurance specialist to keep you truckin, shipping and digging. Copy Southbound is also brought to you by GeoTab Australia. GeoTab has been around for more than 25 years and is all you need for your

1:03connective transportation and asset tracking needs. No matter where you are, GeoTab helps you maximise fleet efficiency and keeps your drivers safe. The podcast is also brought to you by mobile. When you choose mobile, you're not just getting fuel. You're choosing quality and a commitment that never quits. For over 130 years, they've delivered more than just fuel. They've delivered confidence to keep Australia moving. The podcast is also brought to you by GeoTab. The podcast is also brought to you by GeoTab. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Copy Southbound. I'm still up in Dubbo.

2:07I can't say nice warm Dubbo. It's relatively cold Dubbo, especially this morning. I'm here with a fellow. I've had a few people that have mentioned this name to me and said, you have to come and chat with John Morris up in Dubbo. I finally got the opportunity to get up here. He's a fellow that I've looked up. We just had a little chat this morning. We got a really interesting story and history of what he's done in the past. John, thank you very much for coming on. I pleasure. You've been around. It sounds like you've had your figure in a number of different pies and built up quite a good success story. I've only heard a little bits and pieces, so it's all new to me. I might ask you some silly questions here and now then. Please, I always kick off asking where you're from and where your parents were and where you were born and how you're not getting in. So please, the floor is yours. I was born in Dubbo and raised here. Probably will do it here, I'd say. I've never moved away from Dubbo, except we lived in Peakyle for a couple of years managing

3:08a property over there. The rest of my life I've lived here. Right. And we're just in town. Do you own a property or were you just serving? I was brought up in a property called Greengrave, north of Dubbo, about seven miles out. And I went to school at Broccolo's Public School, which was two miles down the road to Wattstabe. School of 30 kids, I think it was. Six classes in one room with 30 kids. Wow. The teacher done a really good job teaching six levels in one day in one room. He'll ask a talent and half of it. Yeah. What year were you born? I don't know. In 1941, January. Yep. So they're interested here and then especially out in the bush. That's a role. We'll both be doing that the whole way through, I think. I mean, coughing my lungs up. So what did Mum and Dad have a farm or what did your parents do for living? Yeah, we had about 1700 acres, a property called Greengrave as I said.

4:13And Dad bought that property in 1946 and he sold it in 1998. Wow. After I left school all I wanted to do was get out of school at 14 or 15 when I left school and go and work on the farm. So I did that. And what did he do on the farm? Was it grain or was it so? A bit of everything. Grow crops, wheat, oats, grew fat, lambs, cattle. And they call them mixed farms, so to say. Just in case one falls over the other one still going so far. Yeah. Hard dig farming, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's often here people are talking about on the city boy on concrete farm, I'd say. It's because I've got a big built by Caleverty down there. So that's how it's close as I get. But love it out in the country, I think it's great. But G, when you have a look at what people have gone through and when you see,

5:16you know, we do a lot with mental health on here. There's one thing that I see where someone's in there like fifth generation farming and then they can't make it work at a be part breaking. I reckon because they're all very humble people. Oh yeah. And it's a hard, unless it's a bit like trucks to try and live. We had three families living off the farm out there at one stage. My brother worked there to with me and they just wasn't enough money to support all of us. I wasn't getting enough wages to live. So I went truck driving, I actually left the farm, told the army and we had to stick his farm when I was 21 and because he was controlling what I did and when I went out and what days I could go out. So I said, Dad, that's it, I'm gone. Spent a week working for a friend out in the scrub on the farm and my future brother-in-law then rang up and said there's a job on the new LH Ford bridge in

6:21Dubbo's for a welder. He said, do you want to have a go at it? I said, yeah for sure. So you could weld? Yeah, I could weld. I was self-taught. I did a course at tech which was a bit of everything going to include welding. So I learned the weld properly. Right. Okay. And when I went to the bridge, the foreman said, are you qualified? I said, yeah, of course I am. And he said, I don't believe you show me. And when I was shading my coat weld, I got the job. I never had any qualifications. So we worked there for really 12 months, I think, before it opened up. Right. Yeah, I left there and... How was Dad when you left the farm? He putt? How was your dad when you left the farm? I didn't like it much but he was totally shocked. I stood up to him and told him what I thought was working there and what I thought was doing and Dad always respected me for that after that. And we got on really well till the day,

7:26Dad. Yeah, that's nice. It's good when you can have a good relationship with your parents like that because it doesn't happen all the time. And as my old man is 90, the only 91, yeah, and yeah, we're great mates and I love hanging out with him and doing stuff with him as an old truck driver as well. But it's just really good spending the time with him and glad I've got that bond with him. Yeah. We, yeah, after the bridge finish, I went managing a property here locally for three months and I didn't agree with the way he was running the property. So I left there and went to Pequill. I got a job through the local stock agent we worked with and he heard there was a position over there. So I went over there and worked for two years and we got into a drought period where we were selling marino, wiener, lambs at the Bay Saillage for 20 cents ahead like lambs are making $400

8:27there. Yeah. We were selling these little lambs for 20 cents because we couldn't feed them. There was no feed and the fellow at owned the property, Bill McLean said to me, he said, I can't afford to keep you on. I was getting $50 a week plus a house. Yeah. So I had a couple of mates from school days. I was having a couple of beers with them one night and they were talking about truck driving and all these fantastic stories and I'm thinking, geez, I'd like to have a go at that. So how old were you then? About 24 or so. Yeah. Okay. And I went and approached one of the fellows that was good friends with dad Ray Holland in W. He had about six trucks, seven trucks. And he put me on. He was looking for drivers and my first truck was a C-1800 inter 160 commons in it, one dec a cattle and two decks of sheep on it and that's where I should. Fantastic.

9:28Started to drive you. That's what I was talking with Rod yesterday, Rod Pilling yesterday and he was talking about those. How he went and bought his 160-inter and what a great truck they were and I said, just had how many were out at the show on the weekend and beautifully restored out there. Yeah. There was a couple there exactly the same truck I drove and same color and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And brings back, I took a couple of photos of them. Yeah. Yeah. There's a fellow, um, his name's Andy. He lives at, um, no long and he's restored a few of them. He had them out there and there was a beautiful bright blue one and a green like Piny, colored one that was side by side and I'm Andy McKenzie and he's got a lot of old internationals. He's, um, loves him and he's, I mean, he's younger than me. So, um, but he's, he restores him for people and he has a beautiful job on them and it really, when you see them roll out and they're a truck probably when I was younger, they didn't really grab me a great deal but you see more and more getting restored now and he turns him out there and I reckon everyone he's turned out I would happily have parked him a shed. He does a good job. Yeah. I wouldn't like to restore a truck not keep it

10:31myself. You know, it's, I've never had the ambition to restore a truck, um, but my young nephew, Likki Burke, uh, who tries for phinimals here and double, he, uh, wanted to buy it back and restore it himself. So I helped him. We tried to track it down. We got down in the Mally in, in Victoria and it just disappeared off the map and, and it's probably parked in the, in a paddock somewhere. We're on the cocky shed and yeah, yeah, and, and go to rust. I keep trucks keep churning out of, of cocky shed, though. Like it's amazing once out there and when you do a run out in the bush and you look at how big and how vast the area is and all of those sheds you see off in the distance and that's amazing how many have still got old trucks in there. You just farm trucks and incredible. There's some still good, some good propositions, but yeah, if they keep them in the shed, you're 200 percent ahead there. Yeah. There's no rust set syndrome, but how many, even

11:33trucks are only 20 years old, sitting out in the paddock now. You see them everywhere, going to rust, you know, the trees grow on over the top of them and you think, you see it on Facebook. Yeah. People say, oh, look, there's a banging. I'd love to restore that, but it costs a pair of money to restore that. You know, when they parked them out in a paddock, they always leave the wig dough down. I don't know why. It's put the wig out. It's a different era back there, but it's good that there's a strong following of it now. When you get out there that had, I love the looks on a lot of guys who, you know, more your ear a little bit older than me, who go out there and see some of that gear and it takes them back. And the story's then, if you're walking around with someone of your era, the stories that start coming out that they remember, you know, I was listening to Jim Healy's podcast yesterday to get some idea of what to do. He was saying that the amount of trucks he's come across that were sitting in the shed somewhere and it wound up in his museum, which we went to last year. It's a massive place.

12:39Beautiful idea. Yeah, he's done a terrific job up there and he's a really good collection of stuff. There's one that I put him onto up there and I'll bet Marona sort of colored cab over and it was a beautiful truck and he got that truck and he restored that. But he's got some beautiful, just a real mixed group as well. There's a bit of everything in there. And he loves talking about him. You got him for two hours then. Yeah, which is great though because, you know, as you get a bit older and I've seen this with the old man and anyone you chat to even Rod was saying it yesterday, the memory starts to fade a little bit. Everything's getting a bit older but the memory does too. But when I see these guys sit down and talk about these RVs and start talking about the old days and then wants to release to another leads to another and then you see the memory, click back into gear and it's fascinating. It is fascinating. But JJ's terrific to listen to and talk and yeah, such a passionate blog too. And he's memory struck me. He knew the

13:39motor's gearbox and diffs in every truck he talked about. That takes a bit of doing. I don't have had guys on here that rattle off every red Joe number of every truck that was in the dad's fleet. That's like unbelievable. Scott Wettnault was one of them all, he held on a lot of people commented on that and they said, well, you know, he must have had a pretty big list in front of him. I said it was all off memory. He had no list in front of him. Brilliant. Brilliant. So, yeah, that's good. So 160 inter. I got into a long nose 1418 and went up in cabava 1418 which was the truck in the yard because it's only one that had a 12 inch bunk in it. Right. And a big bloke like me, I was pretty skinny then but it still took a bit of wriggling in and out of a 12 inch bunk. Yeah, we'll even running around in that old inter. Where did you sleep then? Oh, wherever you could. Yeah, I went on after

14:42I give truck driving and I had to give truck driving away because dad contacted me and it made me go back out the farm. Right. Right. Because he sort of expanded his operations. We went out there for two years. How long did you drive for in the inter and the Benzes? I drove for Ray Holland for two years. That two years at the farm. Then when I started to drive for Phil McGinnis, it was a local farmer here in Dubbo that went on to be a big transport operator. How did you go going back to the old man after being away for a while? Was it a different dynamic? It was but he sort of let your run things, you know, like I was old enough to you weren't a boy anymore. No, no, and you could work out what you had to do for the day if he went away for a fortnight, well you did what you did and the sheep had to be sold and lambs had to be bored in the feed. Did he have trucks on the farm as well? I didn't old Dodge. A couple of

15:43little enters way back there. But we worked out there for the two years and again I couldn't afford to live out there. So I started to drive for Phil in 75. I spent four years with him, drove three of these new Macs. They were black then and a real reputation for putting big loads on. Yes, yeah. What's how they worked it he do? Cutting grain out of this local area, in the mine area, then building materials back out of Sydney. What model Max would they? The first one was an arm model, a black arm model with a 2 AD motor and nobody could it was and no sleep on that either. A no middle seat, it was a bit difficult to sleep in. Then he bought me a cab over Mac and that was great. It had a three foot bed and a big

16:44black like my six cylinder one all. Yeah, it was the same motor. Then he bought a 320 which my mate Graeme McKenzie got to drive after that and I thought when he bought the model Mac, I think he bought it for us $41,000 those days and we, I used to run it. Look, the drivers run the trucks and got their own work. Right, the dockers out, they give them to Phil on Friday and said, yeah, me so much for wages. Because he was farming 10,000 acres himself, he didn't have time to do that. We did it because there was an opportunity to make money and I thought a lot of people run like that back then, was that a bit different? Yeah, every now and again you heard of people doing that. He paid 41 tiers of that truck and then first 12 months, I grossed $90,000. Wow, in 12 months. It more than doubled what he

17:53paid for the truck and I thought after a while, if there's that much money in trucks, I'm getting into them. So I bought my first truck in July 1978. Did you make good money as well? Like as your officer and a percentage or something like that? Yeah, 20% or 20%. Well, and is that why you're so happily turned around and bought your new one? Yeah, I bought a second Andy or for a bloke called Fred Vellar. Like a well-known... Is when you kicked off? Yeah, Fred was a truck operator out of Sydney. He had black and silver trucks and my first truck was a whole cab over white and a bogie, a grass trailer behind it and gates and tarps. I picked it up off him ready to lay and it cost me the whole show on the road, $21,000. My first truck. How was that? Was that a road command? Was it? That was an hour, six years or no, the square cab one, butter box cabs.

18:56$7,000. $7,000. There was one at the show actually on the weekend. One with blue stripes with an 8.71 in it. Did you say that one? No, I did. I'm pretty sure that'd be the same model. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I bought it off even and I've still got the contract because Fred Vellar's father actually owned the truck but Fred's father bill, he couldn't read it right and he signed the contract with an ex and I've never seen that before. No, and he's bank manager, witness, designature, really. I've got the copy there somewhere but yeah, I kept that. What engine was in that one, John? 250 km. 250 km. Slow as. I did a bit of work pulling trailers out of Sydney for a blackslot Roger Preston and you'd come out with 40

19:57on the trailer with the 250 km. It was about a 9, 10-hour trip out of Sydney to Dava. All you did was change gears. Yeah. Were you married at that stage? Yeah, I was married the first time in 69. Right July 69. It was a really interesting time at the time then I kept that truck for 16 months. I think was October 79. I bought a Louisville out of Denmark forward in Brisbane. Brand new. Brand new. With the 9-0s ran it. No turbo again. Rikos suspension, 900 pound box I think it was and about half way through owning that. I leased it for four years and two years in we had a drought here. So I bought a dolly or made a

20:59dolly. I bought another trailer and went road training up north to mainly to mount eyes a cutting coat out of Wollingor. Right. A 40 toner trailer again. Is that how you got to know Rod Pillin or were you friends for a long time before that? I was friends with Rod back in the Ray Hollandays. When he came back from Vietnam I met him. Right. I knew his father before that because he's father used to cut sheep off our property at Greengrave. Right. Yeah. I'll make a little red dodge. I think it was a two-deck sheep trailer. How did it feel going in and like to bite the bullet that first time and get a brand new truck and obviously you would have Oh yeah. I thought it'd be a bit financially but you can get the road and 280 horsepower after Avenue 250 and I was able to listen to this go how many you're excited about that. Yeah. It was a big difference. Yeah. But do you say I got a lot of people on the map

22:02those Louisville's in there? Oh yeah. And they'll know in A3's. But after four years of road training you got gross on 130 ton. 48 months I completely all that truck out. It was completely worn out when I tried to do it in on the LNT 350 carbon so I had and I kept that eight nine years after that. Right. Okay. Yeah. But I didn't two years after I bought the LNT 350. I bought a NLTL with a 38406B cat in it 400 horsepower and it went and can bullet that thing and great to drive big long nose truck. Yeah. Most of it's like for spent road training up north and I had drivers in them with the two trucks. What type of work were you just doing anything and everything? Was it Monday? Yeah. Whatever came along. Yeah. The sub in Fertian T. A lot of general stuff into day one and then you double the trailers up

23:09and come back to because I was a grain carter all my life we'd load grain out of Emeralds back to Sydney. Always had contacts up there to get a load back. Yeah. Right. Most of the blacks that come back here to the bay with the trailers on top. Yeah. I'd always say 240 ton loads of grain on and always come back in to Sydney and relayed out a long gone way you go again. Yeah. Hard work. Oh, I was sure. But that's why you have to do to make a dollar. I mean, it was good. You know, Rod was really open yesterday about saying, you know, he said, oh, the reputation for going heavy all the time. Yeah. And he said, and sometimes you get caught and other times you wouldn't be to say, you had to do that to make a living. Well, you had to do that to get ahead. Yeah. Well, I run heavy all the time. It wasn't unusual to come out of Sydney. Most of all work was out of Sydney, grain into Sydney at a double narrow mine and building materials back out every trip when I was running local. Nothing unusual to come up courage on. He'll heights. Cross an 80 ton, 60 ton payload on.

24:17And I was legal with 20 and the old Louisville used to climb up there. Long as you didn't go change in gears. Yeah. And see they're going to have the back road. Would you come up? Yeah, always up the back road. Right. Yeah. Like less eyes watching you. Was that the main reason? Well, the waybridge, when they built the waybridge at Bell, it wasn't open as much as me and Poise. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And if it was open, you just had to wait. Signalling up Bellbird, would you just slow down drop the thing back in a low low and then just crawl up? Yeah. Always do that way. Yeah. You always selected the gear down the bottom and left it there. You go to the top. Quite often, one trip and every five, we'd go up the putty road and come back to dub. How that way? Yeah. It was about 80k longer. Not quite as hard. And not many skilies up. They didn't work in the putty road. It was right. They just too dangerous for them, I think. But I'll remember one trip we come out of the wall. It'd be

25:20scrubbed road. I got the lights off coming onto the main road and there was a teen section. To see if the skilies were in the corner. And they were on the corner right in front of me and I literally ran over them. When I pulled the headlights on, they grabbed themselves down. They said, what are you doing? I said, I'm dodging you bastards. Did you ever get knocked off in a big way? I got weighed with big weights on. But I'd never had those weights put on the book. They never always come to an arrangement. I got knocked off it. Me and boys one night with 44 tonne of the triaxle. And the Scali fella working on his own. He said, Oh, geez, what are we going to do? I got to lock out. I said, mate, you're going to write me up a 24 tonne of the tri and you and me ago. And I said, I like your idea. That's what we did.

26:22Yeah, I could tell you a lot of stories like that. Go for it. For guys my age who weren't doing that. And it's such a different era now. And there's a lot of guys younger who listen to this. If you just heard one person talking about this, he'd be thinking, right, full of shit. But there's a lot of guys from your era who do say this is what used to happen back there. And it's really, really interesting to think that there was also a little bit of, I suppose we'll call it mate ship there, a bit of an understanding, I suppose, with the Scales. And with some of the coppers as well, where they just wouldn't ping you because now they'll take you for 400 kilos over. And you'll go to court for a bit more than that, which is ludicrous, as you know. And the same goes with your times and your hours you were driving as well. Everything's so critical now. It's hard to believe that that era back then was what it was. Yeah, you thought it was the norm, though, seeing those days and you did what you had to do.

27:25And in my opinion, you'd never heard anyone, we never had never run over anyone. I did run up the back of a car in Sydney one day because I couldn't pull up quick enough, but it only waxed the back of me, my paid for the car. But because we were good, careful drivers and experienced drivers, we never done a great lot of damage to anything. Yeah, and he was a done thing. And you'd have to be gentle on the gear with those sorts of weights, especially pulling up over the mountains, to be able to tour the other drive, wouldn't it? Well, coming down the hills, all the hills, especially the big long one into Bassist, Brown's hill, you had to go back through the gearbox. You couldn't come down there on the brakes with that much weight on. Because if you come around the corner, somebody's crashed in front of you across the road, you'd be able to pull up. No and ifs of butts. So you had to drive sensibly, and that's what we did. You'd come down halfway through the gearbox and on the engine

28:28brake, and don't just let it go, just have it just in case. I've seen so many bikes let it go, they wreck the gear and kill themselves. I think when we were running down the back road, they were all those years. I went to nine funerals of bikes killed on that back road. Well, that's a lot of dead truck drivers. It's a lot of dead mates. If you're going to the funerals it's because they're mates. I think that that's the tough thing. And as you know, and we'll obviously get into what your current career's been as well. So which will indicate to people that you're very aware of what goes on out there now more than most. But when you have a look at incidents and accidents now, and you wonder why, because there's so much technology on the vehicles now. And I'm sure people of your era, I keep saying your era, I don't want to say I'll be like you. So people of your era would be looking thinking how are they, how are they getting it wrong? Are they falling asleep? They got sea missions, got ABS and ABS and all of that type of stuff

29:30there. And I can see, you know, I've gotten, and I know you're good mates with with Ian Panded with Ross Eater and and Derby Sullivan and those guys. I haven't met Derby. I'd love to meet him and have a chat with him and get him on here one day. I think he's got a great history as well. But I can see why guys of that era who have done all of that stuff now then, and are now advocating for it now are probably just dumbstruck at one the level of prosecution that people face. Yeah. It's so different. But also why there are still so many incidents happening there. It's a big issue because I still follow the industry very close, even though I'm out of it now. With some of the accidents you see, we have a lot of trouble with foreign drivers. And quite often with my nephew Luke, Finna more is getting into a lot of trouble with Indian drivers and other nationalities come over with a license they reckon they had in India

30:36than wrecked gear, pull triaxles over corners and cars and you think, how come that happened? Well, they never happened because you grew into the experience of having being a good driver. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, that that that's raised on here a bit probably more often by me than other people because it's a bit taboo to talk about obviously and it's not about, you know, because the race car gets pulled. And it's not about being racist at all. It's just factual. And there are people, well, like when you talk to Rob Odenes Robinson and you know, Sharon Middleton, who we've had on as well, who had some great cessin' even Rod Pillin who ended up saying, well, I had no choice, but he bought trucks to suit those drivers and then he took away a bit of the work that the normal truck he would do just to eliminate the risk and they literally drive to sight and then they'd stop and wait while the truck was unloaded, reloaded, and whatever. And he said, it's either that or got to train them and he and his attitude was, I shouldn't have to train him. No, he said, so I'll

31:40work around them with my business. How was it a bit of an opposite way of looking at it? But the training is imperative and but people have said that their training is good and when I'm saying them, them, or put it in the middle of the hole, there's no way around it. But there's certainly some good and bad groups out there. But I hate the way that they all get targeted whenever there's an incident. I think it is pretty rough. You see all the captions on Facebook, you know, Raj does it again, but yeah, the Indian guys around Dava, they're good businessmen. They buy and house, they're buying businesses, every garage has got an Indian family and they earn it. They're not working for somebody. They've bought it. So they haven't a go. But in the trucker of area, most of them leave a bit to decide. But once they get the experience, they're good. But they're still good trying to get experience on a road, on the road, crossing 68 tonne of B double and things like that. Yeah, that's the trouble is where you've guys have, you know, you worked on a farm

32:44and there's so many people that have worked their way up through them where these guys are coming out there. And I don't know if this is factual, but I have heard a few times that they come out and they've got a license. This is MC, which means motorcycle and they actually get issued a B double license. Do you know if that's true? I've heard that. Yeah, I've read it, but I don't know. And that's only a failure in our government, nothing else. And we won't go talking about politics bad enough, talking about race. But it's some, so for the record, guys, part of the reason that this has come out and John's a good subject for this is because he's worked in insurance for trucks insurance for how long? We, in the end of, or the mid 1992, I think it was one of the reporters from prime television in Orange got killed with a truck at Mount Lambie. She went on or a bailer wolf fell on a car and killed her. And the Scalies got that bad. It finished what I was doing.

33:51I couldn't get heavy anymore. They were just on you all the time. They tripled the man of Scalies on the road to Sydney. And I said to Trish, I'm out. So I sold the truck to fella called Peter Sader at Parks and sold the trailers. And I came home after Peter picked the truck up. And I said to Trish, first time I'm in my life, I'm out of the job. And I got no idea what I'm going to do. That's the true story. I'm sitting there and thinking, you know, all that time I hadn't, and never, never looked for a job ever. Any rate, made a mind on Malino who was running Royans, truck repairs and double said, one day she talked to Owen Driscoll at NTI Insurance. I'd see if he'll give you a job. And I knew Owen quite well at that stage. And I rang him up and

34:52I said, I'm looking for a job. He said, he'd better come up and see me. So Trish and I drove to their office in Brisbane, which is out in the suburbs, so I stayed. He gave me a job. And it was February 1993. And my first commission check for the month was $350 for the month. And you thought, yeah, I'm going to die. Well, that's, we jumped like I'm there, but that's good to know. So if you're ever listening, that's why there's a little bit of more technical talk on these because you've got a good idea about it, but we'll go back to, and I don't even know about that accident at Mount Lambia. That's horrible without reporters. It ended all the heavy running in New South Wales for a quite long time. For Mount Truck was legal with $20,000. No one in the world could make money out of that. So I thought, I'm out. And we're starting to get out. I'd only been married to Trish for a

35:53couple of years then. And I thought, I want to do something else. And I really had no idea. But when Johnny Melano said, get a, I thought to it, I said to John, I could do that for a couple of years. See how we go. I think it was 23 years or enough. Yeah. Well, I said that at compliance. I said, give me six months. I'm going to find something else to do. I would have rather stacked yours at Bunnings in a before and years down now. So it's funny how you find a little bit of a niche. And probably, like for me, I found that we were able to learn a lot more. And I started getting very critical about the way that there was so many transport companies and people were railroaded and were crucified over things that had happened and about training and everything. And then I, that's what made me get interested in it, which I never thought that I would. So I'll go back to you, Louisville. See, you bought the LTL and the 350 LNT. And you had drivers in both of those.

36:56You did? Often on, yeah. A couple of stages. I had a full-time driver. And I'd work at home, because I had a lot of really good work in the double out of Sydney. And at one stage, we had ten subbies, wherever us. Right, right. And it got that busy. I went and got fish from her job. And she came to me and we worked in the backroom of our house in West Overn. And she did all the paperwork for the ten subbies. And those days you had to do lots of paperwork with... Is that how you two met? Or was it... No, no. We... On nutrition, the first husband, very early in life. And I knew the family. I was... You know, well-known week. We used to go out and had dinner together. Things like that. And Trisha and I were split up. My wife left me and

38:01was on my own. A couple of months, I think. She sat across the table from me. It functioned out the golf club. And I was thinking, there's a single lady. And she's not bad looking. So, where we go? Well done. You think I'm a good looking bloke? I'm not punching. That's how we got together. We got married 1990. We met in 85. And it was only two years after that. I got out of the trucks and got into the insurance. And in the insurance job, we worked very hard. We worked around the clock really. I'd work at a nighttime because the phone wasn't ringing. And I'd come in about four o'clock, a couple of hours, sleep, get up, do it again. How many trucks did you win up with? Just those two that you had plus your subcontractors? I finished up buying a green B-model Mac V8 from Ken Wright at Ningen. Ken only passed away

39:11a couple of weeks ago. And the truck that the lady got killed at Mount Leighby, Ken Wright owned that truck. The truck went up a bank after a whole day. The wolf fell off and fell on the car. That's a bit of history there. But I had a bright idea, which was a stupid idea, to quick hitch the trucks in orange. The truck's running in and out of Sydney. I'd take the ladder trailers in, bringing back an unload and try and pick up extra loads like that. This old B-model, even though it was a V8, I reckon it was about 180 horsepower with 40 tonne on. It took me four hours to drive orange. And now the trucks are used to take two. Was it a quad box as well? Well, she's in one of the KTTCs. That's one thing I've only used, well, I only had it about four years, I think. I never landed right back in that quad box. I never mastered it. No, no. So you would have stuffed your rotator cuff as well. So you would have been a

40:16geachage you would have had to do. And I sold it. Is that the one that turners ended up with? Yeah, it is. There's not many V8s around. And I knew the Brian had a green one there for all right. Yeah, I sold her a fella in Trangie. It said in the RDA in double for 12 months, then turners bought it and they restored it. Yeah, and it looks a million dollars there. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, I had a couple of them for sale a few years ago. I don't know if that was one of them. But you sold off. Yeah, you've got a red one and the green one. Yeah. And he had a blue one in the Coliseum. Oh, Bagel. He was wearing a orange. Yeah. It was an X-Forn Struck from Adelaide. No, that was Royal Sculls. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can you write Bordorf's forms? That's a court up with the mate yesterday. Here, Dave Willis, Dave and Andy Willis, I've had them both on here and there. Just gurus on Max. They just live in brilliant and they'll be able to tell you how many threads were on the gear stick on the main

41:17and for the knob to go on to. They just know I'm inside out. They're crazy. But we all need a bit of crazy inners. But he's got a spawns F model. Dave Willis has actually got about, I don't know, I think he's cornered the market on F model Max. He's got quite a few there. Ken Archer's old one. Yeah, I know Ken. Yeah. So on the years, got quite a few there. But yeah, and because he's good mates with Barry Skye as well. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was pretty well known with his Max. Never met Barry. I've heard a lot about him, but I'm never met him. Yeah, well, he drove for spawns. Oh yeah. Yeah, and his photo is a great beautiful photo of Barry alongside a brand new spawns V8 F model. Yeah. Have you ever seen Hattie Ward's F model? It is doing up. He's got a V8 that he's doing up there. No, I haven't seen the one he's doing up. Beautiful. Oh, no, and Patty is a stock cart in days because he used to drive himself and cart stock. Yes. Way back. Yeah. Yeah. We'd meet on the road to Mellembe and always met at Mellembe.

42:20Yeah. And Patty went into the BP agency then. Yes. Yeah. Made a few ball of that. Yeah. I've had interviewed Patty on here too. I'm missing him out of the weekend, but they took go. Patty. Yeah. Yeah. A few out there. So that was when you ended up with that Mac then, and as you said four years you did that, and that was just that was the novelty war off. Yeah. I decided there wasn't enough money in quick teaching. A plus I had to load both ends or do the quick itch and then load and unload and I'm trying to run the other two tracks and it was too much. I just you got to be on the phone when you run in tracks. Yeah. As you will know. So I just couldn't do that one both if your hands were on a D's security. Yeah. Yeah. I never worked that out of it. But um, how we sort of finished up, even right up till I got out of the track. I still don't know.

43:23I've had a road train work. Yeah. And I've finished up buying a super single Maggar trailer of one of the local dealers here and I've had that later. It was the last Maggar trailer ever made in Australia. Very last Maggar trailer. Yeah. And it's sitting in a paddock under Rustin Maggi. Yeah. Yeah. Peter Lewis made good mate from Maggi. He found it and took a photo for it. Yeah. But because of that I really watch as he on a banter super single. It's too that really good as a dog trailer. Right. If you got into trouble and got run off the road, you flat air tip of the dab. It was really good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the as you're saying there, the once they've the scale is cracked and you had to pull back and yeah, you said there was no money in it then. So that was it. Yeah. Well, when we started with NTI

44:29because I was in should with NTI for a few years before that. I'll money ever met Owen Drisco once. Ever? Yeah. A lot of years ago before, long before I was doing this too, but Goli, he got up and spoke at a conference. I was at and talk about blunt. Oh, yeah. He didn't mean to his words there. We basically everything he was talking about with insurance. It was literally lecturing everybody in the room. They should have been doing. I'll see if the God, this guy knows his shit for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And he was he was fascinating. Go ahead and listen to. Yeah. Let me give me a job there. When I first met him, he was the manager of the Newcastle office, which I insured through. And then he got a promotion and went to Brisbane. But he said to me, when we started, he said, it'll take you five years to get to a stage where you're getting $50,000 a year commission, like with a thousand a month. I think that was these figures.

45:37And I thought, well, I'm going to go broke before then. So I hooked in real hard. We worked around the clock. And I think it was three years we got to the 50 grand mark, which was still a lot of money those days. Yeah. But we went on to be the largest premium producer for anti-ion Australia. After 10 years, I think it was. We were there 23 years. And when I sold out, we were still the largest premium producer. And Jeff and Kathy Kaipel and Lauren bought the business. They are still the largest in Australia. And they've got three times the turnover we had 11 years ago. Right? They'd just built it up and up and up. And you know, to have that many clients, I was over a thousand clients. He's thinking, imagine how much work you got to do doing renewals. And we found, if you picked up a

46:38client in Sydney, especially in the New Australian type clients, market gardeners, and if you did a really good job and they were happy and you could understand them on the phone, that was a big trick, which I could. You got all the relics. You get 50 clients out of them and one supper. And it just snowballed. Yeah. Yeah. We were very successful. We went up with a few red elazers and shares. And I built this house out of what we earned. And yeah, it sure was a lot better than trucks. Yeah. That's fun. But your knowledge of trucks would have been a thing that helped you through that. Well, that's what Johnny Malino said. He said, your experience with trucks and knowing what to do when you claim. And my phone was available 24, 7. If somebody had a crash at midnight or two, two a.m. I said, always set up my clients. First phone call is me.

47:41Yeah. Ring me. Tell me what happened. We'd organized a tow truck and the pickup of the load, it was laid to be picked up. And yeah, that we were redone for our after service, after sales service. And because I driven trucks. I knew what it was like to be stuck in the middle of the night because you'd come across accident and squirt off them. Yeah. Yeah. There would have been some massive challenges in that too, I suppose. And when it came to is insurance a thing where depending on how often they keep them upright or not can make or break you as an insurance person as well. We were on an incentive bonus on top of the commission rate. And the incentive bonus, if we ticked all the boxes and didn't have many crashes, was worth 250 grand a year to us

48:41on top. And we worked overtime to get that bonus. Yeah. Because it was worth it to us. Absolutely. Yeah. Those days you could buy a new S or that. Yeah. Yeah. But with the money we were on, we pay the hell of a lot of tax too. Well, that's always the drawback, isn't it? You know, today I can't get the pension. Yeah. Like all that tax we paid, there was no pension to be had because you were self-funded retirees. That's just a rule. Yeah. And you know, this is a thing that we find, you know, working for yourself and you follow your own everybody, you think, good, you know, we're getting a hit on two, well, there's nothing left at the end. Same as what you said, you live a little bit more comfortably. Yeah. But, yeah, you're not going out there and investing in properties all over Australia to set yourselves up. And nowadays the government will probably take notes of that off of you anyway. But the time we get there and need it. So, yeah, the way I talk about now, the, you know, with the income we have off the house, it's inside the

49:44super fun. Well, the government is talking about taxing that now. And when you die, if you haven't pulled the money out of the super fun and give it to your kids before you end, you pay and tax on that. I think it's 20 or 30 percent or something. But it wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just they're finding every little hole that they can. Yeah. Well, it broke. Yeah. Well, that's why, yeah, they are broke. Yeah. Yeah. There's plenty of loopholes there, but they're soon discovering them. Yeah. Well, we're in big trouble in Australia with the political parties. It was 60, I think a 60 percent of the people either work for the government or getting government benefits. There's only 40 percent of us still paying tax to support that. And there's not enough. And like even back in the Howard era, John Anderson. That's a scary math when you put it like that. Yeah. John Anderson, Deputy PM, we're like I know, John really well. And he used to say they're

50:50biggest worry was having enough free enterprise employers to get the tax they needed to run the country way back then. And that's 10 to us worse now. Yeah. We always good with the numbers and figures when you were a young guy. Yeah. I was pretty good at math at school. Yeah. Because it have to be doing this. And yeah. Yeah. It primary school. I was stuck to the school the last two years I was there. I just made it out of high school because all I wanted to do is go farming. But just leading in another story, when I saw the truck in 92, Rod Pellin said to me, now you've got plenty of time on your hands. He said you can come and help us with the Australian Road Train Association. So I thought, oh yeah, I can do that. I'll just put my knowledge into that.

51:54And I went to their first meeting in November 92. And Bill A. Electomy Vice President's first meeting. I never knew anything about it. He knew what he was doing didn't he? Yeah. He had hidden agenda. So all the years, I did every position in the Road Train Association to I've got the list here. We built the Road Train Association up to be one of the largest or most influential organizations in Australia for the transport industry. And I used to go to Canberra at least once a month and deal with the politicians and the bureaucrats. Always in Sydney. I went through I've always kept a resume on the committees I've been on since I

52:57sold the truck. And that's a list there. 48 committees I've been on in all that time, influencing the better deal for the truck owners and drivers. Well, we might, I'd like to discuss these with you because this is a really important part. This is what people don't see and what drivers don't realise what goes on in the background. And I'll often talk about Nat Road and ATA, which is mainly what I've been involved with. And I've had a little bit to do with the livestock association. I think that this is a good opportunity to go on it. I'm often a side track, but to discuss this because I think that this is really important for the industry, especially the way the government is now. So I might have a quick cup and then we'll come back at it. Right, I won't. Sounds good. You can't manage what you can't measure. And in a connected world, it has never been more important to have visibility of your entire transport operation. Whether you have two, 20 or 200 trucks,

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57:09for the task, with a support network like no other. Kenworth's work harder for longer, because each truck is purpose designed for its intended task, then manufactured to those exact specifications with uncompromising quality at their world-class production facility in the Melbourne suburb of Bayeswater. Most Kenworth trucks contain around 60% Australian-owned resources, and their supply chain includes over 70 Australian suppliers located across nearly 300 local, mostly Australian-owned companies. Kenworth, Australian maid, world's best. All right, we're back. So, mate, we'd start talking about the associations that you've been with, and you've been very prominent in associations and getting out there, and looking at your list

58:17to you, which I might just hand back to you in case you forget them, but there is so many things that you've done in your career to try and better the road transport industry. What led you to get into that? Was it purely that first phone call about saying now you've got Tom on your hands, get in, or had it always been a bit of an interest? It's always been a bit of an interest. We did a couple of rally meetings. Pillar and I did a rally in Victoria Park, Dubbo, and I was three or four hundred people there, and I think it was the LDRTA, long distance road transport association, which I was in. I joined LDRTA in July 78 when I bought my first track. Everybody said you got to be an association. So, I'd heard a lot about Kathy Robinson and LDRTA and Peter Lewis

59:19from Muggy. He was in, he was a member of LDRTA. I think he was on the committee for Western New South Wales, and I joined them, and we had this big rally in Dubbo. I still got a photo. It was the front page of the local paper, Pillar and I stand there. I've always been interested after that day of what associations can do for you. So, when Rod said you better come and join the road train association because it started in 1989 after the Kempsey bus crash. And the government came down on everybody hard. I think the ATA was formed that year too, 89. And I eventually went on to sit on the ATA board for quite a lot of years, and it was the

1:00:21peak organisation in Australia. Like the, the NAT roads and LDR or LDRTAs of the day were members of the Australian Tracking Association. It was originally the road transport forum. And I think it was Ron Fedemore, decide to change the name when he was chairman. And they wanted to call it the Australian Transport Association. And Ron said, no, I'm making a captain's call. It's the Australian Tracking Association. And he got his way because he was the chairman. And I sat on that board till 2008. When we accumulated the Australian Road Train Association, I'm now a commator with NAT Road. NAT Road originally started when LDRTA and the Victorian Association of Malcolm Aided, I forget

1:01:23their name now. But I was going to their meetings even back then. Everyone I was driving. So when they migrated, they'd changed the name to NAT Road. That's on road transport association. And when we merged, no, actually we had the first truck show in Dubbo in 1997. And it was out at the race club. We have a mob of trucks there. We had a dinner that night. A Philical Null, who well known operator from Walker was on the ATA board then he invited our association to be part of the ATA or RTF then it was. And so we did that. So we were on that board till the ATA started when Ron changed the name. And I was

1:02:23Derby Sullivan and I used to attend the meetings in Canberra till 2008 when the Australian Road Train Association and Malcolm Aided with NAT Road. Because we were all doing the same work. Yeah. And it was a bit silly having five or six people go into a meeting where you get a way with it with two or three. And we got to know every deputy prime minister those days was the federal minister for transport and roads. So we knew all those guys really well. I think we dealt with 12. I think I got on the list over those years. And when we were in Malcolm A with NAT Road, Kilbaxter and I got two seats on the NAT Road board out of 11 I think there was. And over that six years with the voting of trying to expand the board, we finished

1:03:32up with I think four other road train association board members on the NAT Road board. And I got a bit of a revern over that from Jeff Crouch. He was a chairman at the time and he said, I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to take us over. You said, just cut it out. So I backed off and then in 2014, Kilbaxter and I got voted off the NAT Road board. So that was the end of that. And we had a couple projects in the pipeline. Then the biggest one was trying to get triple road trains in from Northburg to Trangy and eventually Dubbo. So I formed the regional New South Wales road freight alliance, which was an alliance of triple road train operators. And I still run that alliance today and we used that vehicle to lobby the transport ministers and

1:04:36the local bureaucrats. We did everything possible to try and get the triples into Trangy. We raised the mayor of Trangy and myself Craig Davies, the mayor was in. He lived at Trangy and we went to the government and we got $300,000 from the state government and $300,000 from the federal government, $600,000. And we built the road train, triple road train pad near the railway station of Trangy. And it's still there today. It's all marked out ready to go. But from that day to this, we've never been able to get any closer. They promised their best days in the way. Who is it that stands in the way? The state minister at the moment is, even though she's a very nice lady and I've met her four or five times and I've gave a written submissions, a webpage

1:05:38submissions and all the work we've done when we first started to do this. When we first got the 600,000, there was a big media press release just out of double here and I've took up the photos from that. But they say some of the bureaucrats in Sydney used to say, oh we don't know enough about it. So the answer is no. So we're trying to give them all the technicality of it. The regional management of Transport NSF Wales based in parks were just against it. The latest manager at parks, which covers all Western NSF Wales is a lady and she's open to conversation on it. So between Craig Davies and I, we've got to set up a meeting shortly to catch up with her.

1:06:42And those people's recommendation to the minister that will make it happen. But they come up with stupid ideas about the sequence of the rail crossing lights. I'll have to change with the extra trailer on it, you know, 80 kilometres an hour. The sequence is going to change on the rail lights and they might be a crash. I don't know where they come up with ideas like that. And you're trying to counter it and we're still working on it every week. We have a conversation somewhere about it. Jesus, the amount of stuff. I mean, the government is going to turn around to change things. I have to have calls and they've got to have people lobbying like yourselves. Yeah, we, the livestock transporters, they were lobbying beside us too. But we never actually sat together and decided, oh, right, oh, this state will go and meet the minister

1:07:44or these head bureaucrats and the amount of submissions I've handed in over the 20 odd years we've been doing this. No closer to day, what were they at all? Yeah. Do you think that there's a few of my feelings always been that no one's happy to put their name to it until unless something encased something goes pear-shaped? That's what they were worried about. Yeah, and they're worried that it'll come back on them. And I remember some time back and talking to Inspector Down at Maruillon and I found something off him. We were working with a company that had a bit of strife down there and talked about someone who actually got pulled in there and they said that his book was wrong. So, granting him for 24 hours, it wasn't allowed to use the toilet there on site. And he said, look, if I'm going to be granted for 24 hours, can I just go down to the BP? Couple of cases down the road here and pull up in there. And they said, no. And he said,

1:08:44can you escort me down there? And they said, no. And I said, why were they being? He said, we sent him out onto the road and there's a discrepancy with his hours and he hit someone. They said, we're on a China responsibility too. And they just wouldn't, none of them would do it. There's got to be, there's got to be some sort of give somewhere. Yeah, which they're never is. It's always a fear of something happening. But we, you know, talking completely out of school here, but there's been unofficial trials conducted for many years from Dabayda, Burke with three trailers on. Yeah. We call them unofficial trials and inverted commas. Meaning the guys have been doing it for 40 years. Yeah. And never one incident anywhere. Yeah, that's exactly right. And most people wouldn't even know. No, they wouldn't even realise this. That's all the night time. That's all. We never got road trains into Dabayda until 1995

1:09:45as an association. And there was a lot of lobbying for that and a lot of pressure from the people at A&D, the stock trying to get stuck into the sale yards. Do you get opposition from locals on that type of thing? I don't really care. It's not an issue. The only, we did meetings at at Ningen or Bogon Shire Council and Burke Shire Council. And we took the top bureaucrats out of Sydney out there and Scrot Green Hour. He's the head of freight transport for years, our whales. And he's on our side. He said, I can totally see where it would be acceptable, except you get these people talking about these rail lights and things like that. We had a meeting.

1:10:45Scrot was on the Forbes Transport Breakfast presentation by Vida this year, about a month ago. And he's a very positive guy, but all he's bosses, which is probably one other person above him and then the minister, they say, not an air back yard, they don't want to do it. But Scrot addressed both councils that day we went out there. There was about 20 of us went out in a delegation. And the council come up with ideas. If you give us $6 or $8 million to do up our streets to the standard they should be, the triples will look at him. And all that sort of crap. Negative, negative, negative, mainly bureaucracy, negative. We found with PBS combinations trying to get approvals. It always buckles,

1:11:46seems to stop when it comes to the councils. And what the roads managers are going to allow or not allow. And some of the masks for, you know, they want the lanes sweeping all of that sort of stuff. And they expect you to go and do it there for one vehicle. And I sort of think when they've got, you know, TMA and RIM and these other things that are tracking these vehicles now, when they see this X amount of people that are already had it approved, why aren't they just to prove them? That seems to be very slow. They still make it everybody go through the rig run without any core combinations. Yeah, like, you know, even when B doubles first came in, the grant, who was a fellow grandfather of B doubles in Melbourne, it was his idea and he's designed. I sat in East Office a few times. There's only little office too, but he, and he's name escapes me. But he could see what benefit B doubles were going to be if they transported Australia. And he had hell's own trouble getting that show off the ground too.

1:12:49Yeah. They do the big trials and have the media, the press stuff all over there. I mean, we've got more combinations in Australia now than the rest of the world combined. When you look at just what we run and the different axle group configurations and the links, I mean, we're very, very unique country. And there's also a lot, the rest of the world looks at Australia or I think the rest of the transport world does when they see just what we do and how big the vehicles are in the trouble work that they do. It's so unique. The technology, like this quad quad B double that Ricky Burke drives for Phenomores, the front axles on the quad, the front axles on the back axles turn, going around the corners. So there's no scrub on the bitumen at all. And they track ten times better. Yeah. Yeah. That's the technology we've got now. And then, and obviously ABS, EBS, all of that type of thing there. I just worry that

1:13:51sometimes that technology as good as it is doesn't create drivers with now, because it's all much too easy. Yeah. And they're not used to getting one out of shape and all of that type of stuff. So you wonder, and when they do, it's way too late if there's no saviant, because they were lying on it. A lot of dis breaks. And I mean, yeah, great safety feature and everything, but I think that they'd probably end up getting used and abused too much. It's talking about EBS and things like that. We had one of the trucks we had ensured at North Berkey. It was going around the left-earn corner. And he got a little bit out of shape and it went up on the wheels on one side. And it was a black hole plug of BODIN. He was in that road train pool out there. Oh, yeah. And he swung the wheel back to the right, but thinking

1:14:52to get the trailer back down, but what happened? It fell over on the inside of the corner, that fell onto the other one. Or the other one. Come back too fast. Yeah. I mean, I rolled clean over on the inside. We've had that happen. I remember a cutting sheep years ago back in about 72. I wound up with three decks of sheep up on the wheels on one ride on balance to the point that the Alphardine 18 I was driving. I looked at the back window and the sheep's legs were outside the crate. And I was thinking, oh, this is not going to end pretty. Yeah. Any rate, it came back down again and I nearly lost it on the inside. But I chased underneath it and she rocked backwards and forwards and settled down. I tell you, there were some ass puckering moments out there with me. And I suppose when you look at those days where you were driving, like the one in 60 or the old bends and that sort of thing, when you look at the stock crates

1:15:57that are running now. Oh, yeah. Incredible. I mean, yeah. I'll see that first trailer I bought off Red Vella. It was a spread bogie trailer and I closed it up because I finished up using it after the 12 months. I bought the Louisville and I used it as a dog trailer. But it gave me a fair bit of grief too with only two axles on the back. Because it just was old technology and all the steel had gone out and all that sort of stuff. And I finished up getting rid of it. But between it, the bogie dog trailer and the super single magra trailer I used as a dog, it was 200 percent in one direction. It was that much better, more stable and safer. That's the thing today. You've got to be safer. You have to be now. And I think that we talk about the caliber of professional drivers.

1:17:01The Goliath Rinnie look at the caliber of people driving cars. Oh, yeah. We're mixing with. I'll always say, you know, it's the only industry out there that as professionals, you're dealing with non-professionals on a daily basis, which makes it hard. But social media gives them that avenue to go out there and start bagging everything that a heavy vehicle would drive it as because they all know how to do it better even though they've never sat in one. And therefore, you know, you get judged by that. And I think that it gives people attitude, like batter to shoot. It was world of saying yesterday, you know, the 92 percent of, so a Australia wide of vehicles accidents involving heavy and a light of the whole of the full of the light vehicle is a message there. Well, when I'm Drisco Ren, the NTI accident of authority, which was a separate research group for NTI accidents, it came out. I think it was 20, it was only 20 percent or 21 percent of the trucks in a truck car accident. The trucks were at

1:18:06full. 80 percent. The cars were at fault. And, you know, with looking, I did all the claims in our office and exactly the same figures came through. What about, I remember I went speaking one time about truck fires. And I've been the only time that I did here. I'm sure I'm sure it's only one sort of set within, but I remember distinctly in talking about truck fires and saying that almost every investigation they did for a truck fire was caused by a driver who decided they were in a electrician. And we thought their own Marker lights and stuff on and tapping to something they shouldn't have ended up getting a short. Is it to give a fine that or no, we all the years were in the job. We didn't lose many trucks with the fire. Right. I nearly lost that LNT I had. I think there was an engine manning, rubbed through one of the rubbers, which allowed the starter

1:19:13made it to go across to the chassis and the electrical wire rubbed through and started to spark. And I pulled up and it was just glow and red underneath the bonnet. And I'm thinking, oh, but, you know, I always had a water tank on the left-hand side and a bucket got a gallon of water on it and put it out. But that truck would have burnt that night out or not had the water in the bucket. There wasn't many fires in the insurance job that we lost trucks from. Yeah. And there was a highway patrol officer who was a bit of an advocate for the highway patrol and used to go around to a lot of events, discussing heavy vehicles and their input and whatever. And I'm here. He used to put up on LinkedIn. He used to often put up a message on their different messages, but he had photographs put up with every there was a truck accident and an

1:20:14incident or anything. It always put up, you know, hashtag maintenance all the time. It's a drom you insane because it might be a bearing fire or it could be a tire failure or whatever. How can you turn around if it's steered tire fails and say it's a lack of maintenance? If it's especially we don't have plenty of guys that have had new tires that have let go, it just seems the quality of them has gone. There's never any is how do you claim back? There's an issue on how do you claim back against the time manufacturer with a steered tire blowing? You never can. Unless they say they're brand new tires and you can prove when they bought. But very seldom I had a tire I've got a 4-DF350. I pulled my caravan with and I blew a front tire going up the door to go to a range one day. I was only doing about 80k's and all the hystriving trucks you learn never to put your foot in the brake when you blow a front tire and I had a truck and dog behind me and he was on the radio and he said he said you've done that before mate. I just let it slow down.

1:21:19Yeah. But even though the tread was 95%, the tire was probably 10 years old. It was full of the tire itself. I learned from that day don't put hard tires on the front of your steer. I bought a car, it's a car I've accident and actually five years ago and it was an old Ford Ranchero. My wife was thrilled when I said I'm going to sell the new Hilux that I've got for work. I've decided I want to have an old car I'm going to run around in every day. She was the most stupid thing she thought I'd ever done. So she came up to Newcastle with me to pick this thing up and it was a 69 Ranchero left hand drive. The tires still had the knobs on them and had no spare and I thought I'm on a new car so I'll just sit near it won't be that bad. All of course the thing started to get a vibration as I hit the freeway. I got underneath and there's something wrong with this and then I took off again and a blower back tire and was all over the road

1:22:20and they had to get a towed back or whatever. She said he'd be home again yet brilliant. Brilliant. I'm so pleased that you bought that but when I then googled and looked up the code on the sides and that's what people say there's no date stamp but if you look up that tire, how do you work out the date code? There'll always be letters on there to do it and it'll give you the date and when I looked at them and they were 15 years old and nothing had done any work. And so as a real always, you know, always, always decent tires, you know, even the bus out here, no Chinese. I will put them on the drive if I have to order on a trading because you're never getting the kilometres on them but on the steer, never. But then I've got plenty of guys that have had various, I won't name them because I get sued but a few guys just have late and they've had some good quality, very valuable non-murands on near new and just let go. And that's just a game changer. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're often just a passenger. Yeah, that's right.

1:23:20Yeah. It's, I wasn't allowed to blew that tire that day. I did the same thing. The boys said, have a look at the side of and see what date it was manufactured and I don't know whether it didn't come off the spare or it was a fully threaded spare or something like that. But it was too old. It was too unhard. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to buy the bullet. I looked at an old car just recently and I said brand new tires came with it and I'll white wall tires. It was a 30s brand new tires came with it and I spoke to the bloke and asked how I'd do it and said, I bought them 18 years ago. They've been dry stored. Well, they're not worth it. You can keep that part of it. Well, yeah, when we had the trucks, we I'd buy tires. Sometimes they'd ring up and say, oh, we got these Michelin's on special 25% off. You'd buy them and put them in the shed. We had a shed out there where we could saw the tires and they wore a lot better because they'd gone out. Yes. Yeah. That's war by Michelin's.

1:24:25That was always his thing was Michelin tires were that were the tie back in that day. That was expensive, expensive stuff. But I was tried to run Michelin's or I'd run retreads on the drive of the truck and always had new tires on the back on the trailers because that's where most of the weight was. Of course. Yeah. With 30 or 40 tonne over your triax on it. You can't run caps on the drives with that much weight on it. No, no. It's just a 40 degree day out in the bullshare. You'd know it. How hard was it? I know you said that it took you three years to sort of get up to you to your threshold, your aiming for when you got into the insurance. Do you get a lot of support from the people that you knew and that you'd bought with the years when you went into it? Or they've suddenly got you guys in insurance shark. It's going to group us off. Because my association with the road train association and everybody knew I was in trucks for 21 years. They knew I could handle how to handle claims. I got a hell of a lot of

1:25:33clients all over Australia without them. But from guys I'd known, like the Bill Baskets of the World, they came over a bill called Buddha Grant in Winton. He had 10 or 15 trucks. Bill said to Buddha, make sure he insured was John because we were doing the road train association stuff. I'd say 30% of our clients were people we knew or more, probably 50%. We'd either work for me or I'd work for them or then we'd get the market gardeners in Sydney that we'd insure. The trucks they used to cart all the produce into the markets in Sydney, they'd bring up and want to quote somebody recommended this and they're really hard to understand but I made them

1:26:35work to that out of this domain. And all of a sudden you'd have the whole family, they're all market gardeners, you get 10 or 12 trucks. Then all they're released, you'd have another 20 or 30 at a one time. It was all worth a math because we were available 24 or 7. Yeah, yeah, which is a big thing. And we worked from home, look, as I said, working from home, we developed a business that was the largest in Australia for NTI. Well, a long way. Still is today, same office. Yeah, it's just amazing to go into that new career, like you did there and be able to do that. But you had that experience. And I suppose it's the same as and I'm going to go back a little bit to police here. But when you look at people like Barnaby Joyce and I met Bridget McKenzie up at Hamilton Island at the ATA conference as well.

1:27:35But both of them have an understanding of heavy vehicles that are both bought up on farms. And they both have actually advocating quite heavily towards trying to help the transport industry. I don't know to what extent. But I kind of feel if you've got someone there that's got a bit of an understanding rather than a career politician who is just a bureaucrat, who probably runs along the same lines as we've got to win votes and the general public hate trucks, so we'll hate them too. I don't know if I'm on the money there, but that's how it sort of feels to me. And I think that we've got to have someone who gets it. But Barnaby used to come to our our functions when he was deputy PM. Filler called Struitts and Clear, going way back. He was the Mayor of Gaura back in the other 90s. I think it was. He had logging trucks in Gaura. He ate the sawmill and he had logging trucks at Old Ackos. Then he became the federal member for Guaida. And he was in that job for quite a while. Then he

1:28:39wound up being the CEO of the ATA, Australian Tracking Association. He was chairman when we were malcomated. Then he went on. He went to West Australia and he runs a wider tent and shop over there. There's a sort of guys that understood, even when they were police, they knew what we wanted and being a truck owner, Stuart was always on board with what we wanted. Stuart wasn't deputy PM. He was a local member for the National Party. Right. But I know, like I'm in the National Party here, and Bridget comes to the table quite often. She's a go-gitter, but being polite. Yeah. She was, I will wrap there and she'd spoken and Brendan was up there with me and I said, do him, I don't need going to talk to her. She'd be brilliant to any of you on this other podcast.

1:29:43We do the Bissing link, which is all about the more that side of it and the legal side of it there. And all of a sudden she hopped up and walked over and just sat next to me. And she said, I couldn't see the slides properly and I was like, oh, here's the opportunity. We're Brendan sinking that I didn't know what had happened. He said, do you wave tour or something? I said, no, she just came over. But I just introduced myself to her and said what we did. And she said, no problems. It was interesting. She contacted her media guy and I saw her phone and I came back and said, you know, I've checked him out. He's okay. And then she said, he's my mobile and I'm eating coming directly. So, yeah, but I mean, that's what she has to do. We had to just have a quick chat there and golly, she said down to earth. She seemed really good. I've seen her give a few blood lectures. It's popped up. Yeah, she calls us straight. Oh, and she won't. Yeah. But that's good. Yeah, we had a dinner and nobody, two months ago now, Matt Kanto van came down and he's good for the national party now. I was watching him on

1:30:53the kitchen, kitchen cabinet last on our BC. Yeah, here. At the Coalition, I can have a go at winning the next election. They probably couldn't have got two better people. Yeah, go on forward there. But they go out of their way to get exposure too. Like Matt's on Paul Murray Live once a week. And we actually went to the Paul Murray Live double edition he had here. And it's entirely different sitting in the audience watching how they work and all the producers. And yeah, it was a great experience. Yeah. But we need the police that go under shows like that or the other show I think on Sky and Media show. They get those guys on there because of their knowledge. And they're really interesting to listen to. Yeah. Every now and again, you'll get one. You think I think the lady from the Sydney City Council

1:32:00of the London lady, they're giving her a bag on Facebook this week, I think it was. Right. Because she's pretty left winged labour. Yeah. And that's the hard bit. I mean, it almost seems like a game. And it's probably no different to dealing with a lawyer and an insurance claim whether back and forth, especially third party personal injury stuff with it is out of each other. And you stand back and you'll never look anything that is playing with each other now. Yeah. And it's just all gambling. I've been going through a third party personal injury case and that's what has become now. And it's all about, let's go back and forth and get to see each other. And I think for me, it's just a personal gamble they're taken on my future. But it's, yeah, it's bullshit. When I was running, I'd become executive director of the Australian Road Train Association in the last eight years. I used to be in camera at least once a month.

1:33:04And I worked closely with Robert Gunning from the Livestock Transporters. And Dave Anderson from he was running that road then. And Robert and Dave were extrasory officials, bureaucrats. And Robert had a lot of experience in presentations and public speaking. He used to teach me quite a lot of tricks on what to do if you're hosting a meeting. It always say, you know, keep an eye out for the bloke. You know, he's not listening. Then ask him a question. And, like a school teacher would. Yeah. And he caught me out one day. I wasn't listening to him. He said, what do you think of that, John Morrison? But he'd already told me how to reply. But the same thing happened. I did a radio interview back to Dubbo from

1:34:05Anzac Hill in Alice Springs. I was over there for a remade area conference meeting. And the local DJ rang up one new interview. So get up on top of Anzac Hill with a phone work properly. He asked me about something new in the transport industry. I knew nothing about and Robert Gunning taught me this. He said, I said to the interviewer, I said, it's been widely reported in the industry media. I said, we'll walk through it. We'll work through it. Pick out the best track to go on and we'll move forward with that. I didn't know the clue what I was talking about. And he, I'll be listening for that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Robert taught me that trick. He's still going to Paul Dave Anderson. He's passed away now. But Rob Gunning's probably a good interview too, one day.

1:35:09Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And as I say, you know, Derby, I'd love to get him on because he's been around and Kelle Baxter, I've had on here as well. Bill Baskett's a guy. I'd love to sit down and have a chat with. Yeah. Just the history is. Yeah. I met Bill back in 1972. He used to go. If you had a wet season up north with the dirt roads, a lot of the northern lakes had come down and subby for the local stop carriers. Right. And Bill came to the bow in 1972. I think it was. And I first met him there and we've been with my seven cents. But when he found the ice, I started to get into the road train and say, show you, she rang up and said, I want to be part of this. We did that. And he could see all the work I was putting in. And so that's when he said, right now, you can do my insurance. So the, you know, the work I was putting in people repaid me

1:36:15by becoming our clients. Yeah. That's great. So they know that you get it. Yeah. So you understand it. How many trucks did he run at the height of it? I think Bill had about eight or ten. He subbed for Johnny Bain. John Bain Transport. Yeah. Yeah. And they had oil-fuel transport services. They did a lot of rig shifts way back. Bill originally came from Augustella. I know he didn't cover all of Augustella. He studied trucking business in Augustella because he swifed. Lin came from there. And they had a couple of tipers on the shower. Then he got into stock trucks. So that's when I met him. Then he moved to Tuumba. He was on the castle at Tuumba for a while. Then he started to run to Darwin and Derby worked for Bill. He cut a flare and things like that. And he basically got right out of the trucks now. He was telling me the other day

1:37:20that he restored 29 trucks that were gone into the Winton Museum. Wow. That's a big restoration of solidly it is. It's a big investment too. And he still do it. I've seen a lot of his restos and they're not geoluxary builds like they're done probably. And that's lovely. Again, I get a real kick out of the fact that he respects our heritage so much. It's all preserving history. I think it's a great thing. When you look at the insurgency, we always hear of different stats and that sort of thing. What's an honor to Bill or anyone? What's the most dangerous former driving out there as far as what's the most unstable? What do you, did you tend to have more incidents with? Because you would have been looking at this stuff all the time. Really sickly stock carters used to have the most dramas. But across the board, we didn't have many

1:38:23claims. That's why they paid us the 250 grand a year extra for not having claims. How do you knock that claims? I was just going to pick the right people. Pick the right people right. A lot of people rang me and wondered when I was sure with us. And I said, mate, no, not with your record. I go away. Oh, shit. I did that a lot. Yeah, right. Okay. Then you get fellas that bring up, want to put a claim in. And you knew it was a dodgy claim. And you just say, no, go away. I'll not pay that claim. I used to say no to the claim on behalf of NTI. It wouldn't even get to that. And I, no. Yeah, because of all the experience I'd had. Then, then, then, like some makeup stories and what had happened, they'd run off the road or whatever, said they blew a type. I said, mate, tell me the truth. I said, we pay for accidental damage in inverted commas. If you're going to sleep and run off the road, we'll pay it. No trouble. Don't do it again. Yeah. And then they come claim. Yeah.

1:39:30Yeah. It's fair enough, isn't it? Yeah. So they had to be as honest with you as you were being with them. Well, I don't know how many times I went to sleep when I was driving. At a road train coming north out of Boulieu, one night going towards Mount Isah, and I was following Brian Green from Burke. They had a moment of trucks. And I've gone to sleep. We're talking about him yesterday. And when I was coming here this morning, he's diming sitting in someone's driveway up the road here. That's where he lives. Oh, is that where he lives? Oh, right. It was sitting outside. Oh, it's a double taken. Yeah, he moved from Burke to here. He and Jen were at the truck show on Saturday. Yeah. And I'm following Green and he's I'm in my nine hours straight to 90 horsepower. And he's got a 350, I think. And he got away from me. And I'm said to him, I'll keep with you. I've gone to sleep, run off the road. Lucky was claping out there. There was virtually no table drain. I'll wake up and no ride. Couldn't see the road.

1:40:37And I'm thinking, I'm going off the left hand side of the road. So I was thrown to the right and put the bull lights on. And I'm driving around the big sector looking for the white pace. I'm going off the right right hand side of the road. I'm under a yards off the road. It's still going at this stage. Pedal in the, pen the white pace back on the road and views the crap out of him when I caught up with him. I don't make experiences. Yeah. You never had any majors with your own. I had a, I hit a, the old white I bought off Fred. I traded in on the Louisville in Brisbane. And I was choosing to pick it up on the Tuesday. And on the Thursday I allowed it barley out of a long little silo at La Rade here. And going to Sydney. And I hit a rut in the road, the dirt road. And it was like a spring in the road and used to wash a gutter across the white zone.

1:41:42I've hit this gutter and it broke the eyes out of both front springs. And it came back about a foot or so, whatever spring will come back. But because the steering link was still on the tide of the axle, pulled the, where the steering wheel saw it, a full right angles and down off the road, down through the trees, pushed a big tree out. And I thought it was coming through the cabin back. But I'd really be pulled out of it. And got it pulled up and I love it. It's not my damage here. And fell over on the side after I pulled up. And all the crap I had under the left end seat hit me on the head and kept me in open. And I pushed the windscreen out and raced up onto the road because I could hear a car coming on the gravel. And I put me in it. It was a lady driving and she was going to run over me. Because I hadn't been able to do a blood all over me,

1:42:45she had, I've come out of the scrub. Oh, right. She's panicked. She couldn't see the truck. I was that far off her head. Anyway, she finished up pulling up and I told her what happened. And she took me up to the lake all close to Svarm and I rang everybody. And yeah, it's a sunny time. I've had a major here. It's lucky. I rang the guys at Denmark forward and I said, I've just wrecked the truck. I'm doing how old was it? How old was it? The track. It's a 74 model. I think it was. Right. It's about four years old when I bought it. But I said to the guys at Denmark, I've just wrecked the truck. I can't pick the new one up. I got no training. And they said, I was your insurance paid up. I said, yeah, they said, they give me the new track on Tuesday. And they waited a month or the other one to get fixed up and repainted. Then they changed a few things on it to suit themselves. Yeah. Yeah. They unsoldered it and made a good quit out of it. Jesus.

1:43:49Wicked out well, didn't it? Yeah. You could be lucky. Yeah. We might have another breakmate and we'll come back and finish off, hey? Right up. Good stuff. When you're clocking long hours on the road, clear communication is an luxury. It's essential. That's where the UniDen X85 UHF radio comes in. From a brand known for its engineering excellence, the X85 is built tough for trucking life, delivering reliable, crystal clear communication, whether you're rolling highways or working around busy sites. The large LCD displays easy to read at a glance, day or night. And with instant replay, you'll never miss a transmission, even if you didn't catch it the first time. With 80 UHF channels, simple controls, and UniDen's trusted durability, the X85 is made for drivers who just want gear that works when it matters. And if you need something different, UniDen offers a full range of UHF radios for every field from trucking and construction to off-road and worksite use. UniDen X85, dependable comms for drivers

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1:46:55Australia-wide, more details in their full range can be found on the Premier One website at premieroneproducts.com.au. And in the words of Bernie himself, when you need the job done, you just got a call Premier One. Oh, alright, we're back, mate. So you got inducted into the Hall of Fame up at Alice and the National Road Transport Hall of Fame. Beautifully kicked off there many, many years ago by Liz Martin and you know, magicians should put together. But you had a bit of a hand with helping her with one of the books that she did up there. Yeah, when Lucy started to write the first of the three stories from the raid books, which were histories on two-page history on operators. I was invited to be on the advisory board. There was about eight of us on the board and we'd fly to Sydney and have meetings. And how I think Howard Changs was on, Jim Healy was on there.

1:48:04A lot of the I'll transport people and we, I found it very good to listen to, especially the ones older than me, with some of the stories. And I've got, I actually got into a bit of trouble when Liz launched the book. It had advisory panel John Morris, Australian Road Train Association and NTI Insurance. And because I hadn't got permission from the NTI hierarchy, they've had a spin out. So Liz is that to do another run without the NTI printed on it. But NTI, I think, paid for that. But they've also put the logo on the front cover. Right. But my name was an associate with NTI. And it was all politics. And I really don't know who

1:49:12got upset at NTI. But there was a second run of the first edition. Right. In a weird how that happens, you know, and you're just, when you're, I don't know, when you're a smaller operator, but you're involved with some of these bigger things, you don't realize how a lot of that works, you know, and if you're going to be upsetting you one and and to have it and it catches your off guard, doesn't it? You know, I was happy with us a couple of times. I was within the transplant industry. Everybody knew I was associated with NTI. Because I was there, leading agent on one agent of the year, four times over the 23 years. And they just put NTI. It wasn't an agent off NTI. And that's what NTI hierarchy, see that I should have done. Or not even put it on there in the first place. I should have got permission. Yeah, they sure themselves. I don't know. What even does this start? I don't know.

1:50:13And you would have thought, oh, good, I'm doing a bit of advertising for them or whatever else they're there. Yeah. And instead at backfires, I deal when you're trying it all good day, day, nothing worse. Yeah. And we even second and the third editions of stories from the raid. I didn't have much to do with, I don't know whether it leaves that in a advisory panel on those ones, but it, once you work out what you're going to do the first time round, I assume because the publisher was on our panel too. I think at the lady's name, but she led the conversation and really worked out where it should have went to be successful. And Liz was looking for support from the industry side, which we supplied at even the last two books were very good. She did a great job. It's a lot of history to compile.

1:51:16Yeah. And you see the stories she puts on Facebook now. She's put my story up once or twice. And the knowledge and the interview she's done the thousands of interviews she's done. And I remember all that stuff. I don't know where she takes notes, but she does a contribution on Facebook, every couple of hours and really around the clock. Because she's probably hasn't got much else to do. And just run another museum. But her knowledge is to be admired and no doubt about it. Yeah. And it's been nice when you see anyone that gives up time to honour the old road transport guys, the industry. I mean, what how many people now know about

1:52:17the ASC road trade and about Courgette, Hans and about Cold Ward and all of these companies that might have been known by certain pockets of people out there, but suddenly everyone knows. And she's been up because she's promoted it so well. And I really think it's great. And she's got, obviously, she's got the stories of the road museum now appearing now since she got out of Alice. You've really got to look at some of these museums and it's said about Bill Baskett, the amount of vehicles that he's restored and the Winton Museum. And I haven't been up to Winton Museum. I'm itching to get up there. It's worth going there. Everyone tells me to go up there and it's just gonna get there. September 12 months, it's on again every two years. The problem is it's just normally the same weekend or just before or after the Claren't and weekend that we do. So I would say to get up there, we can't get up there unless we fly up there. Claren't on Claren't on this year or not? It's on every year. Oh every year. Claren't classics on every year. So that's that's the third weekend and set Timber every year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's my wedding anniversary weekend. I'll never forget it. So

1:53:25with like we when Lewis found out, well, she rang me about going into the whole of fame and stories from the red and to walk through there and see the plaques on the wall. It's same as Alice Springs pretty well. But the old names and you think, I know this black new, that black unevenly year. I went in there two years ago at Port Piri. There was three or four fillers that I knew went in the same time. And it's great to be recognized. Just think, in the old days, people would say, oh, you're a legend. I said, yeah, legend in May and lunchbox. Yeah. That was that was our saying. A really good mate of mine. It got killed in the funny road. Phil Cavillaro, Phil the walk they're calling. You know, we were supposedly legends

1:54:30those days. And Phil said to me, John, do you think I'm a legend yet? I said, no, Phil, you're running a rumor. Well, it completely deflated him and did it just wreck these days. We got a few laughs out of that one. Exactly. Yeah. No, I think it's and must be a great thing because when you look at a lifetime and as I was having a bit of chat with Rod Pillard in a sedale and you look at Lindsay Fox. And I mean, he's a one that comes to mind. They're just been a person who just started off with a single truck lock so many other people. And there's ways it is done it. And there's a lot of people that have come out burnt if you wanted to ask them. And however, but you know, unfortunately to grow the entertainment work from other people and that sort of thing. So that's going to happen. I mean, it often is because they come and approach you to do it, not because you're going around door knocking. That's I've found that more and more in business too. Normally, just people come to you and if they're

1:55:31unhappy, well, if you don't take it, someone else is going to take it. But to think what he's done in a lifetime is brilliant. Oh, yeah. It's absolutely amazing. Rodded Pursell has got, you know, his seven-year old vehicles there. So he's massive as it is. And there's a lot of companies out there that are privately owned that are huge. And that's a really big thing, but especially to be going for that amount of years in this industry. Because there's a lot of people that don't make it out the other end of this industry. Oh, yeah. I'll see you going back. You'd remember Ken Thomas when he first started, he had a little farm at Narrowmine. And we used to cut wheat off his farm there. And who would have imagined Ken Thomas going on to be, or started Thomas Nation, right, Transport Team T. And it's all over the world now. Yeah. And unbelievable. Those fellas, you're talking about Lindsay Fox. Lindsay's right-end man was Mick Best, Dick Best here. And when we had our CEO in Canberra, Duncan Bremner,

1:56:38working out of our office down there at the ATA office, he worked with Mick Best and they put on the first Melbourne truck shop and Kilvaxter. And we set up a quad road train. Same as what we're trying to get in from Northburg. Today, there was two of John North's trailers and two of Kilvaxes and Kil's prime mover. And we had a great display and unbelievable people that came around and added chat to us. Yeah. I met Shannon All of Singer that day. I'm thinking, geez, I know this black. And he was just kicking toys. And surprising with the years I spent in Canberra and different meetings when we went to and functions, the amount of famous people you meet and not trying to make them either, they just come up and say,

1:57:43good day. We met John Howard. I think I met six or eight prime ministers Bob Hawke. And then we worked with the deputy prime ministers, as I said earlier, there was about eight or nine of them. We got to know and even fellas like John Anderson, they still walk across the room. They get a Johnny gun today. Pretty good, isn't it? Yeah. They remember your face. Yeah. And I've got a little album on my phone and politicians I've met and famous people I've met. And one of the, and I say this every day, one of the most profound people I've ever met has been Robert Smith. Ben was guest speaker in 2013 at a conference, that road conference in Darwin. Yeah. And he was a guest speaker for the day. And he spoke an hour and a half. Wow. And we got the photo with him afterwards.

1:58:47Unbelievable man, that black and tall. He's two meters tall. Yeah. And I'm six foot one. I think it was, and he was six inches taller than me. It's weird when you're a tall person. He's suddenly met someone who's really tall and he think, God, this is how it is for everyone else. It's intimidating. And I've been following his story since they've been trying to prosecute him. And you think, why? Look, if you heard his story for an hour and a half, some of the crappy out-to-go through in the battles over there, he was telling us the bad guys over there that's no uniform. They're all got cloaks and a blanket over their heads. And they walk around with their arms cross with the blanket on him. And he said, after we got AK-47s under the blanket, they just pull it out and shoot her. And he said, we're in uniform. And the stories he told was brilliant. And they want to hang at some point. Why would you want to go to war?

1:59:52Yeah. And why join the Army? Yeah. All they're going to do is turn people away from wanting to do it. And it's no different to going out and doing your job, driving a truck there. And knowing now, you can be doing everything right, but you can still get prosecuted to the simplest of things that have nothing to do with you. You have an accident where a driver's full of drugs or something like that. And yet, the whole company can come down. And there be the public concerns, me, is where someone can take their own life under a truck, but they can still come in and investigate you and find a whole other shit that's absolutely unrelated. Why would you want to go and join the Army to go over there and serve your country? And then you have to make snap decisions over there and then turn around and think that you're going to get put in for some reason. It sounds like a tall poppy syndrome to me. That's pretty alive and more like Australia anyway. Well, most people know the story behind bedrive and space anyway. Yeah. If you follow closely, there was a bit of a tall poppy syndrome there.

2:00:56It sounds awfully like it. And it's just disgusting. Yeah. And I can't believe that someone could get pulled through what he's been called through and they tell you what he's got some supporters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got to know Maddie Wright who got all that trouble with the helicopter in the territory, the Outback Rangler. I think he had his show. There was another show up there keeping up with the janges. The James family was helicopters. Well, we're good friends with Milton and Christina and the boys. And whenever we're up that way, we're going to stay with them for a week or so. And like Maddie Wright did his time under Milton and Milton's got, when we're up there last year, 55 helicopters, I think. Wow. And what you see on that TV shows, what you get in real life, and he started with nothing. He absolutely nothing. And he made his money out of bullcaaching. You know, the big arm on the legacy. He designed all that and caught enough bulls

2:02:02and sold them to pay cash for a cul-a-bar station. And there's about 40, 40 miles of Victoria river down through the middle of it. Wow. We've been barifishing there and all that. They're great people. Yeah. The different people you're meeting live. Yeah. Yeah. It is certainly interesting when you can know they talk about rubbing shoulders. But it's just interesting that those circles you get into. And when there's been an image on TV or in the paper or whatever, and then you meet them face to face. And it gives you a new perspective on why the other. But you often get a new perspective. But normally that's down the earth and just do it a job like anybody else. Yeah. Yeah. Early, we've been to cul-a-bar three times, I think. And all my friends were up there last week. And Milton was just a dag of a bloke. And you know, and Christine was right into camp drafting and a young Jack, he's a champion bull rider now. And

2:03:09young Milton was on the TV show. He was on a little tag of that. He's a big love for a kid now. They've just started a transport company up there. Like James' stock transport. Just to give him something to do. Good on him. Yeah. That's something real. Yeah. That's really good. With just getting back on to roads and politics and that sort of thing, probably a good thing to clear on once and for all. There is so much debate that comes from people where they will hammer the NHVR. But what they'll be hammering is the NHVR have pulled over because the PR people at the NHVR have put the stuff on Facebook seriously, they need to be reinvented because it makes them look stupid. There's no two ways about that. We need to have things like talking about the quality of the roads. So saying all we're defecting the vehicles and ever going to have outfits in the roads first and how about putting in rest stops, etc. With some of the stuff that you've done through the groups, how hard is it trying to lobby to get this done and what seems to be the hold back for putting decent rest stops in?

2:04:13Is it purely just cash or is it the council stand in the way? How does it work? It's probably all of those things. I'm currently still on the New Law way task force. Government run organisation. It involves nearly all the mayors that are on the New Law way. I've been on there since 2006. They're a very powerful lobby group because of all the mayors. I represent the heavy transport industry in New South Wales on that. The amount of rest areas we've got through that group on the New Law is unbelievable. And passing lanes and our group developed the wired centreline concept through the knowledge of some of the engineers we've got.

2:05:16They said, what say we look at this? Do we get the backing of you guys and what the council and the transport operators to wired in the centreline to any up to 1.2 metres I think it is. And we said, yeah, go for it. So the first one was done down near Westwile long. Next one was this side of parks, north side of parks. It's worked great. And in my opinion, especially with the rumble strips on them, if you get a centreline with a rumble strip and you go over it, well you're halfway in the next lane straight away. But with the wired centreline, you've still got one or four foot we used to call it years ago. You still got four foot to wake up and bring it back if you're asleep or you're not concentrating or seeing as the concept isn't it? Yeah, the young kids today on the telephone and not watching what

2:06:21they're doing. But this group that I'm on, we've got a hell of a lot of passing lanes and full support of all the councils on the Nule. And our chairman Chris Royal Ants from Forbes, he said, Deputy Mayor of Forbes, and now he was the Mayor, he's Deputy Mayor. His concept now is to duel the Nule. That's the new saying, duel highway down the Nule highway. And you got to start somewhere and he started it and we do it every opportunity to promote it. But places like Westwile on two Forbes with the floods, every time it floods down there, blocks the Nule highway, stops the whole show, all the trucks ride, 2000 trucks a day or whatever. So we've decided to apply to

2:07:23a separate road built beside the all road, build up a flood level and open that, then do the all road up and get it up above the flood level too. And everybody knows how much safer dual highways take a Pacific highway and the U. It's not many accidents face to face, type accidents happen there. This is what we want to happen on the Nule. After, graft and bus crash, I mean they said that they were going to have dual carriageway up, but they took them over 30 years. Yeah, which is scary that it's taken that long. I don't know whether you heard the story and I'm pretty sure it's true. Straight after World War II, America offered to build a dual lane highway from Brisbane to Sydney. I don't know why or what their motive was, but the word went around,

2:08:24they wanted to pay to build this highway and I don't know whether they were going to render back to the government or but why didn't the Australian government let them do it then? Yes, it's great now because we go to your anger every year, all our friends and spend two weeks in the caravans up there, but I remember when I bought my first truck, some of those sections of that northern road were shocking, like wooden bridges. There was wooden bridges on the Pacific highway in 1978. I actually broke a spring, the front it spring on the truck, on one of those wooden bridges, lucky it just went bang and the truck lurched sideways and I pulled up and I think if they shut blocking it up and chained it up, but that's how bad that road was and look at it now. Yeah, that's beautiful now. Absolutely, freeway. Yeah, but it certainly took a long time,

2:09:27that was there. Yeah, it's government funding. I sat on the Bellsline Expressway group, six, seven years and it was a bipartisan group. We had a national party poly from Carrer on it and the Labour Party, poly from Bathurst and we developed a new raid, a four-lane raid over the Blue Mountains from Sydney to Lithgow and the original engineers want to put tunnels on it. I said, you can't run dangerous goods through tunnels anywhere in the world. So we re-engineered it all and the raid came up from Yaramundi, round Yaramundi bridge there, upshrew the valley, up to Bilpen, followed the old road nearly all the way through, thinking of the Greenies and it's a bell that sort of switched across or a clearance it was and came out

2:10:27at the Lithgow Jail. It's four lane all the way at once. Never been able to get there off the green in 20 years. Money, it was all money. Of course, yeah. And look at the deposit. Better go down there on Mount Victoria now, you know, and just crazy. I'm going to go down on Thursday morning and you've got to hit it in the middle of the day, otherwise you're bailed up traffic everywhere through Lithgow and that. Yeah, sure. No, I asked that question. I said, what have been the net raid for them in double a couple of weeks ago? I told them the same thing. We developed this no tunnels raid and it was released in the booklet, about 50 page booklet, fully bipartisan in parliament. I have seen Sydney. It was launched. We all went down for it, but still sitting on the shelf.

2:11:32Money. It's crazy. It's all money. Money. I know. But there's also there's that many of lives that get lost along there as well. Oh, as I said earlier, I've been to nine funerals between lakes of dye, between winds around Lithgow. Yeah, over the year or those years. It's been a lot of them. That's horrible. So can anyone contribute when it comes to the bit with anywhere, when it comes to rest stops, what would have you? One of the ones we look at is one of the twin cow texas coming down the coast road of Wong. Then the next place is on the freeway to stop. It's business nest. Yeah, damn onway. You've got to get off the freeway to go even to any of the other places there. The next truck stop you've got is business nest. Well, I think it was the big fiery crash down near Galb another day. One boat was trying to get

2:12:36in the truck stop and it was full of trucks. Somebody had him up the rear end and the whole lot exploded and burned all the trucks. Surprisingly, there was no fatality there. That was incredible. It's scary for a lot of people who were sleeping in trucks there too. Just what a situation. We need a lot more rest areas, but it's probably not enough. We're lucky with the new railway task force. We concentrate on the new and we get stuff done. But all the other roads that need rest stops, the stunner people poke on the bureaucrats in the chest. Right. That's the trouble. Rod, how many of you does a little bit? He's brilliant in that area. He designed that big truck stop at Tarry with a hearing moan parking lot. He had a lot to do with that.

2:13:36He's an unknown treasure on the road transport industry. Rod, how long was talking about that a lot yesterday and said how he hasn't been poached by government or a lobby body or something to get on there because he's got the contacts and does it. He does it from his truck, but it's not like he's just started doing his own for a lot of years. That sort of becomes the key where a lot of people, if it's really affecting them, need to probably get out there and it's safety in numbers too. They can get a group of to do it. Yeah. It'd probably work, but they also need a spokesperson. They can't be like Donald Trump. He gets out there and may have some good ideas, but just needs to shut up and have someone else talk for him might work. Yeah, that's what he's been doing. When we had the road train association going, he would arrange to get a poly in the truck at Walbury or Melbourne or somewhere and transport him up to Dubbo and then they'd come to our conferences and speak.

2:14:41I think the greatest liberal prime minister we never had was Brendan Nelson. He came to Dubbo in Rod's truck and we had him here all day. Beautiful. He would have been a great prime minister, but it just was a meant to happen. Yeah. Rod's had all those important people in the truck with him. Yeah. He does a hell of a lot and they certainly got to be commanded as someone that I'm in awe of what he does because it's just so much personal time to go there to try and improve it for everyone. There's not big night in himself. It's not what it's about. He's got a wife and he had a wife and he's got a wife and he had seven kids that I haven't to feed. Then he's got a grand kid. I think he's feeding. You know, he does really well for the hours he puts into lobbying and the miles he's got to do to make a quid. Yeah. Yeah. He's a terrific person for the industry. That's for sure.

2:15:43Yeah. And we need as much of that as we can get. Yeah, there's nobody that I know is coming through the Stearnies job. No. There's a lot like NAT Road have all put a lot of younger people in and there's a number of key people that seem to be popping up at these conferences now who are younger and are coming on board and working their way up and younger chievers and that type of thing. So they've got to turn for it. I can't remember. I'm having a mental blank but there's a they do call it something. It's not younger chievers award but it's that type of thing there where there's a group that come through or come to me. Yeah, I think I read a bit about that. Yeah. Yeah. There's been quite a few. I think Dan LaCrosse's sponsors are on the tip of the tongue. I'm going to be getting punished for this. But yeah, anyway, it's a future. Future leaders, I think it might be. I think it might be down across the future leaders I think.

2:16:44But yeah, there's a number of key people that they're pulling out of the industry doing stuff and we do need it but they've got to keep on it because the hard thing is you say you're trying to run a business plus do that stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was like I was spending 30 hours a week with the road train association, especially when I became executive director. And I was doing at least 30, 40 hours a week on the insurance business with the section I looked after and Trish done all the rest. But massive amount of time it takes up. Yeah. And as I said, I think we got inducted in that hall of fame the last line I put in there that I got heaps of self satisfaction out of making a difference. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that is the thing to know that you've been able to improve something somehow somewhere, whether it's

2:17:44education, whether it's fixing roads, you know, for us it's trying to get the word out there more and more and trying to educate people as to what can happen. That's the thing that Brendan and I are moving on now is trying to because that's the side that we're exposed within no one hears about that. You know, and it's a I was telling Rod yesterday there was a we got contacted and this is a perfect example that people don't hear about but we've got contacted by a company and one of their subbysers coming in picked up a couple of machines on a float and there was a new float. The low loader was near the prime move. It was fairly new. The guy wasn't overly experienced but was thinking he was doing it right because everyone's looking up everything that they can. Unfortunately for him, he had a permit but he had a visible load on the back. So he was over. Well, it wasn't over with anything. It was just a mass thing. So they pulled in back and said, well, what you've got down for 30.8 tonnes is what you're way over the back group and it should

2:18:45have been 24 tonnes. So he got knocked off for that and then he didn't have an oversized permit and he was too long. So he was encountering an oversized permit. So he's not realizing. Now, a lot of people out there who know, we say, well, that's of course you meant to be doing that. But there's people who don't understand because there's not a lot of tuition out there on this. So he got knocked off for being, I think it was 20.8 metres and they bought him back to 19 under a normal gazette. You couldn't run it in 22 or whatever it is, 25. So the new law is 20 metres now? Yeah, that's just for standard. This guy got pinned. So for the over-dimensional, the fact that he was too long, he got a $63,000 fine and the mass one was 168,700. So he got two notices. Now, what they put on there is this is your maximum fine and it's got a court and you've got to

2:19:46try and defend yourself and see whatever you can produce and it may get pulled back a bit. But there the two fines that were put forward. So $230 or $1,000 worth of fines and people don't hear that because no one goes on Facebook or whatever and brags. Yes, what I just have been doing, the only brag about the other stuff they do, but not about that. And so that's the sort of thing that we've got to get out to people who say you have to have your ducks in a row. As I said, the transport breakfast I went to in Forbes and the net road information I'd hear in double a fella called Paul Daly from the regulator was there. He was going through all the fines and it's an out as a was going to afford all this stuff. And it's well the fraudulent entry is a big one and how common is it for you to sit down and say, geez, you know, I stuffed up there and put a different mark in your logbook and whatever

2:20:48there. And if they don't line up, this is all if you've had a major, right? And they go back and check this. So for that guy on that float, that's bad enough that he coped a fine. But if he was involved in a major and they turned around and saw all that and they would say, well, you're not actually meant to be on the road like that. And then you're really in shit. So when you get someone who has done a fraudulent entry, pulling out all three pages is regarded as fraud. Putting down you've had breaks when you haven't had breaks is fraud, etc. So the fine used to be $13,310 and it's just gone up and doubled it. That's $26,620. And for those of them out, they're going, oh yeah, they wouldn't charge you that much. We have seen guys get the $13,310 fine on numerous occasions. No one rags about that either. Make an out day when I was driving. I don't remember getting logbook funds. But every time was under $200. Yeah. Like if you got burnt, well,

2:21:50yeah, you won't do that next time. But not often you filled a logbook in an out day either, because they've inspectors were out around. Yeah. But I was going to tell you a story completely away from that. When I was going for NTI, the managers that come in were whatever were re-entabled with the road team agents. I was one of 12 agents in Australia. And the management and the claims guys just be ripping it into us for doing this and doing that. They'd make decisions we'd disagree with on our side. How many guys you guys driven a truck? Nobody. And I'd say, pick me. I said, how many of you guys crashed a truck, rolled a day over? Nobody. I said, pick me. I said, I know what I'm talking about. Listen to me. Yeah. I know

2:22:52it's to give it to them. Yeah. And that's what we do in the event. And that seems to be that downfall. I know. And I know that the bureaucrats have a lot of people who come and will advise. But are they small owner operators who are advising? Yeah. And just how many and from what parts of the industry? Because the industry is too diverse to get. That's right. Everyone, you know, everybody, like these two functions I went to recently, you got the owner driver there and the big fleet operators were there. And that's not the same for everybody. I don't know. That applied even back an hour day. The big operators, they'd get away with a lot of stuff. I was at East Avalade all the time and I think after 20, four years, I wound up with 50 overleading fines to be named. But none of those fines are over a thousand dollars. Yeah.

2:23:54It's most from a three, four hundred dollars. And pretty. It's pretty. Yeah. Yeah. But that's one of the reasons I never went into public office, you know, with say the local council or state government was that sort of somebody would want to hang out to dry. They say, don't wait for this bloke. He's got 50 Avalade and fines through the day. Right. I think it's a misdemeanor or criminal offence. Yeah. So that, that not making right out of being in public office at all, even for the local council. Yeah. And folks like Pellow, he's always up there about not standing for the local government or local council. Going at least there and I'm by all means, I mean, Rattle of some of the things that you've been involved with over the years because he really puts some time in. One of the big organizations was the NTC's National Road Transport Commission, NTC's National Transport Commission.

2:25:02They had a group called the Remade Area Group of Australia that when they started a lady called Carolyn Amiduri, her name was, she let it. And we had meetings all over Australia. There's one thing the association did for me. By the time we left, I had 1.7 million frequent flyer points flowing all over the place. But we had the Ushari-Made Area Group meetings all over Australia, West Australia, Perth, Darwin, Ellis Springs. I did a lot of speaking at public conferences, ATA conferences. And we had a Remade Area conference at Ellis Springs in the conference center on the north side there near the way bridge. And those people would listen to you and we got a lot of changes made. But this Remade Area

2:26:13Group, not big noting yourself, but we had the best representatives for each area, each state, a niche, made a transport, livestock as there and the deper operators and that. And we did make things happen, which as I said in my resume that I kept track over the 40 or 48 committees I was on. At the end of the day, it was the self-satisfaction of making a difference for the industry. And while we were in Toronto, it was an industry that we made money out of, didn't make much money out of owning trucks, but we made a good living out of insurance. But again, you had the knowledge from owning trucks. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the guys said, are you be right because you've been there and done it, but especially in risk management, that was Buzzword with NTI, risk management. We used to

2:27:20risk manage all our clients. And we, I think I might have said this before, we had clients, I wouldn't ensure. They come to me and I'd say, no, I don't want you. You're a bad risk. Did you do diligence here? I know what you like. You're either dodgy or did the wrong thing. And with the bonus that NTI paid to see each year was a pair of money, it was up to us to pick the best clients and manage the risk and keep the claims out. And our return on in dollar invested with the dollars to the clients paid us. We had one of the best risk manage books in Australia. And the largest book of business in Australia for NTI still left today. Yeah. Let's talk about your award because I know that was probably the biggest highlight

2:28:24that you got. And that really is a standout to us about. Yeah, in 2017, after being with a member of NATRAD or LDRTA, come NATRAD since 1978 to 2014, I think I left. They decided to give me the Ted Pickering Transport Award at a NATRAD conference in Hamilton, Ireland. And everybody thought it was going to be a surprise, but NATRAD paid for our affair up there. And I thought something's up. We retired out of the insurance business in 2015. This was two years later. Exactly two years later. We got invited up there.

2:29:25And it was a great honour to be awarded. Ted Pickering was a great man in the transport industry. And his son Roger still runs the business out of Gilgira. The Trisha and I called in and had breakfast with Roger and his wife last April. And he just called us up on all the latest information. But yeah, and the Road Trader Association gave me an award for contribution to the industry too. That was 2008. I think that was when we merged with NATRAD. And I think I got an agent of the year with NTI for four times.

2:30:27So that was a big honour. We always had a competition between us 12 agents in Australia who could get the gold cup, which I've got four of in the cabinet inside. And then CGUI insurance gave us award in 2013. They're having the largest business in New South Wales. Then they put us in the largest business in Australia. And Trisha and I won that too. And they had the award in a conference in Christchurch in New Zealand. Because Trisha had a family thing on, we didn't go. So very disappointing. We went there when they announced it. The next year at the conference they gave us the award in front of everyone anyway. Yeah, nice. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see now? I mean, you're getting obviously

2:31:29your retirement ages, your fingers, your fingers, and plenty of pies. But when you look at the industry now, I'm sure there's plenty of things you're glad that you're not involved in. But what's a big problem is that it's been a problem all along is drivers. Acqualified and experienced drivers and getting the kids to, like our day, there was kids bus and to get in to drive in tracks. I think Jim Hurley might have mentioned on the East podcast was the guy's round kaiagle that were driving trucks at 16 years old. I drove the Armeans truck down to the wheat silo and I was driving that at, I went to life's school at about 15-16. That was three-tutton international with 10-ton of wheat on the back of it. Yeah. And I was driving a skyscraper, it was rocking around.

2:32:31But what we learned from experience there, and that's the big problem in their transplant industry is experienced drivers. And the drivers coming from overseas, all right, they've got a place, but they need to be trained. They need to have assessments through their accreditation guys, not so much the government, just make sure they can drive. We've got driving schools here in Domo, and they do their own assessments and take them off for a license. Every overseas driver needs to go through something like that. I think it should get narrowed out. I know that Sartus, South Strain Road Transport Association has put their foot down with this and had some changes, but it should be Australia wide. But my thought is, if they're going to come out here and they're out here on holidays, from anywhere in the world, I was told in a man in India, I've said before, we were dealing with a company who was Irish, and they all had blonde hair and ginger hair and blue eyes, they could drive,

2:33:34and they were hopeless, and they all are. So it doesn't matter where they're from, he's, they didn't stick out like a sore thumb. But I think that if you come out here on holidays, it's one thing. The moment you're going to be turning around and actually working for money out here, that's it. You should have to have be trained and actually have an Aussie license. Yeah. And I think that that would be a best thing. But I'm also a little bit skeptical about some of the one day license systems that are out there too. The competency-based system was what I originally went through. And I got mine and so you had to get certain ticked off from certain areas there. But now you know, I'll get it in a day. That doesn't work like that. I've got to tell you how I got my semi-license because we out on the farm, I didn't have a truck license, but dad used to have the off-Judy policeman out, come out and drive tractors and headers. And I was asked mainly what they did drive tractors.

2:34:36And I was driving this international back with the Tforsal Local Weets, I alone. One of the guys said, you better drop in tomorrow and I'll write you out of license because they were there at Avestime. And when I worked on the LH Ford Bridges or Welder, they had an old double A inter single drive, right move with the Perkins in it and a single axle trailer that they used to wedge down to the local stores and pick up supplies for the bridge, like steel and mesh and things like that. And I drove that a couple of times and they I said, actually said to the manager that I didn't have a truck license. He said, well, you're a very good one. So those days you get the old sergeant come down and we've climbed into the center and it's parked on the bridge on the deck and they had to back it out through a 10-foot

2:35:40gate on the blindside to get back out onto the main street. So I backed back off 50 yards, screwed around, went out through the gate back once and got about 20 hours out of the side of the gate and he said, that'll do. Is anyone come back a truck as good as that can drive forward better? He said, you got your license. That was the day I got my license, you know, semi-license. Yeah, let's shoot still my one day theory. You did it and one goes. One timidum session. No, it's a bit again, you had the experience. Yeah. And that's what's lacking out there now. I don't know when that'll stop. I don't know if we'll see you change through that normally when they get to that point, they're never going to make it hard again. You're going to get big companies that want any driver, at any cost. They got political clouts, they'll say, let them go, let them go. Yeah. And if they crash, insurance companies are

2:36:41pay for it. That's the biggest problem that we've got. And you do get some customers in the today in the insurance jobs that insurance companies won't ensure they've worked up. They're doing now what I used to do back then. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Get work out. If they're a bad risk and you knew their background, you wouldn't touch them. Cost of money if you did. Yeah. There's always somebody down the road to the insurance. Yeah. I suppose that's what happens here or how do you do it if they went through a broker and contacted you still have to do you do diligence? Or does that come back on the broker? It comes back on the broker, but 90% of the brokers don't know, 95% of their customers. Whereas I was in the industry, I knew what they were like. Maybe that advantage you. Well, as I said, I had up to 10 subbies work for me at different times.

2:37:50And you got to know who was a good operator and who wasn't. Whereas a broker in Sydney, a lot of the major broken companies are in Sydney. They got no idea. A couple of the bigger companies like AEI used to attend natural conferences and they'd sponsor them and all that sort of stuff. And they'd have a bit of risk management from experience and they would not come back to. But a bloke walks in off the street and the people in Sydney never met him before. They'd say, you give us your money. Well, that happens. I suppose it's all a bit of a risk, isn't it?

2:38:50As I said, NTI relied on us to manage the risk for them. That's why they're the largest truck insurer in Australia by far. Yeah. We should probably give a little bit of a shout out speaking of AEI of what we just found out about Tim. He just shocked me with that. So you just tell the story on here. We got a Jeff K. Blue board our business sent me a text yesterday from the announcement from Noel Kelly who's I think CEO of AEI insurance brokers that Tim Wedlock who has worked from the company says day one. He got run over with a car in Nashville in USA on Saturday. And he'd been in the job 37 years or something. Great bloke. He tried to buy our business

2:39:52a couple of times and a wife and two kids. 58 years old. Yeah. And he, yeah, and we, we were only up at Hamilton Island having a young with him up there and meeting quite a few times and really, really nice fellow. He shocked me. I hadn't heard the news until I walked in here and he walked out on the street in Nashville and somebody run over him. Yeah. Go on. Just like that. So, yeah, you know, condolences to Tim's family into AEI. It was a massive part of that organization and yeah, really, really, really sad news, a really nice fellow. You'll see Noel Kelly is CEO of AEI now. He's father John Kelly was in the room when we started truck safe at the ATA. John Kelly was an ex truck driver himself and he went to the ATA. Then went on to work for NTI. And didn't meet him and Jenny had Noel and he's going under

2:40:54the head of AEI now. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The family of the history back there. Yeah. There exactly. You were involved in the start up at truck safe as well. Yeah, I was on the ATA board representing the road drainage association when I think it was a philical Michael Aps that was with the ATA Mike Edmonds. He was there. He's one of the bosses at NTI. And Oh, and Driscoll. There was three or four others. There was a call for an accreditation program and they developed truck safe. And the manager of truck safe or the I think not the manager, the chairman of truck safe poor fellows is also the chairman of net right now. He said at the conference in Dubber last week, I put my hand up when I said, mate, I was in the room 30 years ago. When truck

2:41:58started, I said, how has it been received now? Is it still as well respected as it was then? And it was an ideal tool for us in the insurance industry. If we saw a dodgy operator that really wanted to ensure with us and I knew them, we'd push him into truck safe. Of course. Yeah. And get them get them. Get them straight. No, they've got something. Yeah. And that they're running by some rules because they might do the job really well, but they have to have that paperwork down there. And we'd refer them to the operators like Derby or in Pendern or people like yourself. And once they got into truck safe, their business, their risk management improved overnight. Yeah. We didn't have as many crashes because they were doing the right thing. So I was a real big advocate when they started. And what was Paul's answer to you? Yeah. I said, is it as well respected in the industry, like the customer side of it now? And he said, yes, he said,

2:43:01it's still proving to be truck safe operators have less accidents, less fines for not complying with the rules. And they're in it because they want to be in it. And they want to be better. Yeah. Yeah. It was really good. They, I think the livestock guys had their own scheme at one stage too, livestock lading, which they could go up to a higher cross and in 4.6 higher crates, they had to be in livestock lading. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. And the more advantage they can get. And I think that that should be something that the government does, mate, is when you, and even with insurance and all of those things, if you get people that go to the trouble of having, hey, we do our training and we onboard them the right way. We've got scene machines in there. We've got later technology. We've got ABS and ABS and all these bits and pieces.

2:44:05Why wouldn't somehow the government turn around and give them an incentive on doing that there and reduce taxes or their registration or something to give them a bit of incentive to make people do it? Oh, yeah. Well, see, that caravan in one, it's 10, 11 years old. Now, it's got ABS breaking. If you get to rock up, get out of control, it sleeves the brakes on and pulls you up. Like, ABS said, I need you just start to come in when I got out of trucks. But it was a game changer and they'll do. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's helped a lot. A lot of truck drives down like it because they're going around and going, I was pulling the brakes on, but then you're saying, yeah, that's because you're going to have a shape mate. So, yeah, that's the idea of it. Yeah, that was my answer to what I'm doing. They were a wind gun. Yeah. Back off a bit. Yeah. Yeah. And I've, well, mate, we might pull it up there. It's been great. What a top career you've had. And I really admire the fact that you've gone through the bit with the trucks to start with and done some pretty hard

2:45:07yards there, but then to be able to get into something totally different, as you said, sold them up and said, now what am I going to do? And I'm sure Trish turned around and said, yeah, well, well thought out, mate. But at least you got in and you had that that desire to get in and try something totally new that you've made a big difference in that area. That's for sure. But honestly, the time they've given up and the same as you told you about Rod Hannife and you have just done it in a different way is the amount of time you have given and you're still giving more the sounds of it to try and improve the industry in general. There's so many different facets of the industry to try and make it a better place and we need more and more people getting in and getting behind that as well. Yeah, I said I get a lot of self satisfaction out of it and I'm still on three or four committees, probably four or five. We're still making differences. We're making a definite. I think over the years I was on about

2:46:09six local council committees. They knew that I was making a difference on each one and they'd invite me in. Yeah, just background experience. Yeah, and that's what they need is sometimes to get you in there and give you some advice, get some advice from you and know that you're given them the right advice. Yeah, that's what they're all looking for. I just think what do you want to talk to me for? But yeah, you realise why? Yeah, exactly. Right mate, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure there. John Morris, thank you very much for coming on the copy south down. Before we wrap this one up, I just want to say a massive thank you to the partners who helped this podcast possible to Kenworth, Trucks Australia, NTI, GeoTap and mobile. We genuinely couldn't do

2:47:14this without your support. Backing independent industry media like this matters and we're incredibly grateful that you choose to get behind the stories, the people and the history of Australian trucking and of course a huge thank you to every single one of you listening. Whether you've been here from day one or you've just found the show, we appreciate you more than you realise. And to our Bangers Club members, thank you for backing the show week in, week out. Your support lets us keep telling these stories and we're genuinely grateful to you all. All right, that's it from us. Thanks for riding along, stay safe and we'll catch you on the next one.

2:49:02We're going to do what they say can't be done. We've got a long way to go and a short time we get there. I'm Eastbounded, watch our bandit run.