FEATURE
By retiring editor Wayne Munro Photos (mostly) Gerald Shacklock
In my happy place – well one of them anyway! At the end of the road on the mail run in the upper Rakaia River valley
And it’s goodbye from me… T STARTED 22 YEARS AGO WITH AN UNEXPECTED OFFER from publisher Trevor Woolston to stop merely writing about truck racing….to writing about trucks. Not only writing about them, but editing this new magazine he was planning…. Yep, New Zealand Truck & Driver. I wasn’t exactly born to it: In what had already been a 34-year career in journalism – first in newspapers, then magazines, then on tv programmes covering motorsport – the closest I’d come to trucks had been the likes of a certain Denny Hulme’s Scanias, Robin Porter’s Eagle Spares Kenworth, the wickedly quick Bedford driven by Avon Hyde, etc. Yep racetrucks all. I did the PR and promo stuff for the launch of truck racing in NZ, later did the on-track and tv commentating…and covered the racing during its glory years. But as for working trucks, the road transport industry and all that? Nothing. Zero. Yeah I’d driven a truck….once! Drove it slowly around the Pukekohe motor racing circuit when we were setting things up for the first Caltex Truck Grand Prix – struggling to get my head around changing gears with this ridiculous, double-clutching gearbox….with 18 gears FFS!! THE ROADRANGER comes back to haunt me in the early days of
NZ Truck & Driver, in 1999. Getting my HT licence is essential – to give me at least some understanding of what it takes to drive a truck. So a deal is done with DECA Training, for me to join four others aiming to get their truck and trailer licences…in just four days! I get to do the course free of charge…on the basis I’ll write a first-hand account of the experience. Yep – whether I pass or fail: So….no pressure, right! Our trainer Graeme McIntosh, poor bugger, somehow (mostly) remains cool, calm and positive as we do our training – all travelling together in DECA’s Ford Louisville tractor unit, with a tanker semi behind. There is the occasional growled instruction: “Don’t do that – please!.... Come on! Stay left!.... Don’t get off the side here – it’ll pull you right through the fence!” One, barked with urgency: “Power, power! When I say power don’t you dare lift that foot!” On the very last day before NZ switches to the current graduated licence system, I’m either going to get my full truck and trailer licence….or I’m gonna be publicly shamed – still unable to fathom an 18-speed! Thankfully, I wrangle the Louisville around the Ngongotaha driving course no probs….and, for the first time all week, manage Truck & Driver | 63
