After spending more than 40 years on the road, legendary Rocky owner-driver Colin Whitcombe is still getting used to being at home every night.
Just a few weeks into retirement – he officially called time on July 31 – it’s a hard habit to shake when you’ve carted every type of load imaginable from Rockhampton to Melbourne, to Darwin, and all along the east coast, right up to Cairns.
The last 35 years, or so, Colin’s main role was hauling new steel from Brisbane to Gladstone and Rockhampton, and whatever is available on the return back to Brisbane.
No one knows the Bruce Highway better than Colin who had to laugh to himself when he heard a TV report the other night saying the road had been dangerous for the last 10 years.
“I thought straight away, ‘This highway has been dangerous for the last 50 years,” Colin says.
“They do patch-ups on it; they don’t do a proper job. They’re too lousy with the money I supposed, I don’t know.”
“But I’ve been on those new sections of road, Gin Gin, Cairns, wherever you want to mention and the bitumen’s only like an inch thick.
“One shower of rain and it just turns to potholes and some of those can be two foot deep and five and six feet long so you’re going to lose the truck in them.”
If Colin had his way, the Bruce would have been four lanes from Brisbane to Cairns 20 years ago.
“Not in 20 years from now – it should have already been done.”
Colin, now 68, has to stop and think about how many kilometres he’s clocked up over the last four decades.
He reckons he’d put 3.2 million kilometres on his 22-year-old Kenworth T650, before that, the old Kenworth cabover did the same run for 13-14 years, at an average of 250,000 kilometres a year.
“I don’t know – you work that out [that’s another 3.5 million by our calculations].”
Most of those k’s were incident free. The only accident he did have, a rollover in his 1981 K124 “Foxy Lady” near Caboolture left him with a broken right leg, two cracked rigs and scars he still carries today.
“My right-hand side of my face was also sort of missing and they rebuilt that. I was off for six months.”
When Colin first bought trucks back in the 70s, the rule of thumb was a three-way split when it came to working out costs: a third for the truck, a third for the driver and a third for fuel.
“Nowadays it’s like probably 55 per cent of your earnings going on fuel and the owner gets bugger all out of it, and if you’re paying drivers, it’s even worse.
“With some of the rates, I don’t know how some blokes do it. That’s why a lot of them fall over.”
Colin would love to see the much-debated driver apprenticeship model formalised sooner than later.
“Even if it’s only a two- to three-year apprenticeship. They’ve got an older, experienced driver telling them how to chain things down, how to do this, how to do that the right way.
“These fellas know absolutely nothing, and then go buy a truck. They’re an owner-driver. “They’ve got a business, an ABN, but they don’t even know how to put a chain onto a trailer, they put it onto the rope rail. Stuff like that.”
With bigger staff-run fleets encroaching more and more on the role of the owner-driver, Colin fears for the sector’s future.
“Owner-drivers are going to be a thing of the past in 20-30 years; they’ll be very, very scarce.”
Even so, this third-generation truckie would do it all over again in a heartbeat if he had a chance.
“I loved it. The old man had trucks, he carted timber; he had bullock carts with my grandfather first.
“He had Chevs, Bedfords, and stuff like that. I was brought up in trucks, but I suppose I had no choice.”
Colin can still remember his first truck he drove, his old man’s single-drive Chevy; he can’t have been more than 11 when he was first let loose in a paddock.
There’s been plenty of personal sacrifices along the way, of course, as is all too common for owner-drivers battling to make ends meet.
He was on the road so much he missed out on three of his children’s births – the only one he got to see was eldest son Joshua’s arrival.
Two have since followed him into the industry – sons Joshua, 37, and Brodie, 31 – and wife Karen reckons Colin couldn’t have stayed behind the wheel for so long without their support.
“He couldn’t have done it without our two boys being heavy diesel mechanics, that he’s relied on every time something’s gone wrong,” Karen said.
“They’ve always been there, every weekend for him and supported him, and when he’s got home in the truck, they’re here waiting to fix it.”
His best advice for youngsters following his lead today is to take your time and do it properly.
“And listen to the old fellas.”
He laments the loss of the days when if you broke down, whether you were on the Putty coming out of Sydney, on the flats at Bowen, or out west, you had a couple of trucks pull up in front of you and a couple in behind.
“One of drivers would be boiling the billy and the other four or five would be helping to fix whatever was wrong.
“Nowadays, you haven’t got a place to pull up because they don’t make roads wide enough to pull up to even change a tyre.
“Even if you manage to get off the road, everyone is an overnighter, they come around you at a dollar five, 100k an hour – you wouldn’t get one in 30 that would stop.”
Colin gave up trying to stop and have a rest or do a check at a “proper truck stop” between Rocky and Brisbane years ago due to the amount of caravans flouting the rules and taking truckies’ parks.
“These days it’s even worse. They just look at you like you’re an idiot. I don’t know how many times I’ve rung the coppers about that sort of thing but they never seem to do anything.
“I’ve even seen some of them break open the power boxes on the lighting systems at some of those weigh pads and poke their vans in to get their air conditioners going and have a cup of tea.”
Colin and wife Karen will be “going for a drive” themselves later this year in the refurbished 1976 Volvo B10 school bus he’s turned into a motorhome with the help of son Joshua.
He promised Karen he’d have three months completely off the road now C.J. Whitcombe Transport sold its three trailers and beloved T650 “Blue Moon Swamp”, named after the 1997 John Fogerty album and Aussie concert tour by the same name.
But Colin, who plans to keep his licence and medicals up to date, also told InfraBuild he’d cart the odd local load for them from November, if they get stuck.
“I’ll do it, if it comes up – they’ve rung me every week so far.”
In the early years, wife Karen would tag along in the cab, their first-born Rebecca sleeping in the bassinet in the back.
She even got her learners so Colin could have a kip in the bunk while she drove down The Beef Road (now known as the Fitzroy Development Road).
But she’s glad to have the grandfather-of-seven home now after “plenty of lonely nights” farewelling him on the Sunday night and worrying about whether he’d return safely.
“You’re continuously worried about him, until you see him come home.
“He’s a bit bored being at home now, but he’ll get there.”
“I don’t mind him doing casual work – just casual work, mind you – I know it’s in his blood.”