Remember the days of the Jackie Howe, stubbies and thongs-wearing truck driver who could fix a 12-cylinder Mack prime mover with a toothpick and some fencing wire?
Those days are behind us and while the game is still the same … getting payloads from A to B in the most effective way possible … the players have changed.
Which is to say the technology has changed the drivers.
Safety is the name of the game, NSS’ new Transport Manager Nathan Pearce said.
Forty-four year-old Nathan has driven the biggest of the big rigs. A stint in the Pilabra saw him driving Super Quads.
A Super Quad is a 60m-long trailer road train. They can have 33 axles and 128 wheels and close to 200t gross vehicle mass.
Nathan was pulling four trailers of iron ore in side-tippers from site to Port Headland roughly halfway up the West Australian coastline.
So he’s learned a thing or two about driving and brings that experience into the new role.
Empathy was the key to getting the best out of drivers, Nathan said.
“It could be any number of things like from being held up on sites, waiting to get loaded, dealing with traffic, going through towns to what it’s like to be stuck on the side of the highway for hours because there’s been an accident.
“Just a lot of things like that. A lot of managers that I’ve had don’t take that into consideration, or sometimes how physically draining it actually is. Sitting in a seat for 12 to 14 hours while driving up and down the highway.
“People say, ‘oh, all you’re doing is sitting on your ass driving a truck all day’. Well it’s not that simple.
“The level of attention that’s required when you are especially pulling 200 tonnes like we’re pulling over in WA amongst traffic, you’ve got to have every single wit about you or otherwise, you’re on your side.”
A typical week can see drivers assigned to Cloncurry to haul zinc ore to Sun Metals and others travelling on rotation to Ingham during the harvest to cart molasses back to the port for export as well as a handling hundreds of containers in between.
They’re called to haul lead concentrate to Townsville Port by road during the wet season when the rail line is cut thereby guaranteeing a cash flow for operators.
NSS had an exceptional road safety record and measured success in part by what didn’t happen, Nathan said.
“Communication, listening to your drivers, making sure that they’re not affected by fatigue,” he said. “Fatigue’s the big one.
“Listen to the guys about what the road conditions are like and not setting unrealistic targets. Give them plenty of time to be able to complete that run that they’ve got.”
Mr Pearce has a partner and family in Townsville including three daughters, 24, 22 and two years old.