When Hannah’s Haulage truckie Doug Young, 58, says he’s clocked up 8.4 million kilometres behind the wheel in more than 30 years of driving, you can take it to the bank.
It’s all there in black and white, meticulously recorded in a career-long series of handwritten diaries, documenting loads, locations, hours worked, load weights and daily kilometres.
Doug said the habit started when he worked in the healthcare industry up until the age of 26, first as an orderly and then later as a house manager in the disability services sector.
“They tell you in healthcare the best form of self-defence is documentation, so I’ve just learned very early on to document everything,” explained Doug as he reflected on a special driving milestone that few could match.
“It’s mainly for myself, but it’s actually helped when they’ve lost job information on computers. I can go back through any day and tell them exactly what they need to know.”
Although he’s had a passion for trucks since he was a young boy growing up in Sydney’s Liverpool, Doug credits his late father, who was also named Doug, for the inspiration behind the switch from healthcare to the cab.
“The only other thing I knew how to do was drive because my father was a driving instructor in the army. He taught all us boys how to drive.
“He taught us how to drive an old Diamond Reo with a Spicer gearbox. Then he taught us Road Ranger before I moved away from home.”
The bulk of Doug’s 8.4 million kilometres have been with three companies, the first of which was the Wetherill Park-based DTM Transport, which was later bought out by K&S Freight in 2006. He spent 17 enjoyable years with them, carting gases all over Australia. After that Doug moved to Toll Express for six or seven years, carrying liquid gas and fuel to regional NSW before taking a break from the dangerous goods sector for a stint with Woolworths.
The installation of in-cab cameras ended that partnership, a move that Doug still has strong feelings about today: “They say it’s for safety reasons, but I don’t think it is. It’s more about big bosses micro-managing staff and I don’t think it’s needed.”
Doug tried his hand at a handful of other driving roles after Woolworths – none of which he says are worth a mention here – before landing on his feet two years ago driving liquid ammonia for Hannah’s Haulage, which is owned by Scott Hannah and based at Riverstone in Sydney’s north-west.
“I love Scott’s, they’re a very good company and they leave me alone – I wish I’d come here 20 years ago,” Doug said.
“They know what I know and I’m very good on gases, I’ve done gases for most of my life. I helped Scotty set up the trucks to do the stuff that we’ve got to do and I love it.”
Scott, who was quick to let Big Rigs know about Doug’s remarkable driving milestone, said it’s the veteran driver’s ‘old school’ and ‘can-do’ attitude that helps make him stand out from the pack.
“Most younger people today seem to have a ‘I can’t do’ approach, but if we’ve got a fair bit on, Doug will work it out with his hours and always say, ‘Yeah, no worries, I’ll get it done. I’ll start early, finish late, whatever we’ve got to do to get the job done’.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s here, or in the middle of South Australia.”
“Having the experience he’s got, especially in the DG, makes him second-to-none.”
As a measure of that respect, Scott didn’t hesitate in throwing Doug the keys to a new Mack Super-Liner a little over a year or so back and Doug’s already clocked up more than 330,000 blemish-free kilometres in the pride of Hannah’s 40-strong fleet.
“That’s the hard part today – some blokes say they can drive them, but whether you drive them without bending them is something different,” Scott said.
“The young blokes [seem to] know more than Doug and I know. When Doug was young, and the same with me, you spoke to the older blokes and listened and watched, whereas now the young blokes try to tell us we’re doing it wrong.”
Scott, however, is sticking to his guns on the mentoring pathway as the best way to prepare younger drivers for bigger combinations and has assigned Doug the job of teaching a handful of youngsters the ropes, a role he’s thriving on.
“If there’s one thing I can get into someone’s head it’s that the only dumb question is the one you don’t ask,” said Doug when asked what his best advice would be to newcomers today.
“An old-timer taught me that when I was starting out and I’ve never forgotten it.
“Any question in this game is not a stupid question. If it’s going to save your life, ask it.”
Doug, who started in a 3-tonne truck and had to slowly work his way up, does worry about the training shortcuts that some in the industry now seem to be taking.
“Some of the drivers I see – and I do a lot of kilometres – they scare the shit out of me, and I’ve been driving a long time.
“I see blokes driving semi-trailers and they’re watching a DVD – while they’re driving.”
Still, Doug sees more than just a glimmer of hope in the youngsters he’s mentoring at Hannah’s – and in his son Josh, who at just 24 is about to follow in the old man’s footsteps, driving road trains up in Roma, Queensland.
“He’s already got far more experience than the old man, you just ask him,” laughs Doug.
“I’ve never pushed him into it. It’s just something he’s really wanted to do and it’s the best thing he’s done.
“I’d put him on tomorrow – he’s a very good operator.”
Doug is on a 24-hour break when Big Rigs stops by Hannah’s Riverstone yard to get some pictures for this story.
He’s off again to load ammonia at Kooragang Island in Newcastle the next day before the 800km haul down to Mulwala on the Victorian border – a routine he’ll repeat three times that same week.
At more than 5000km a week, it’s not going take Doug long to reach the coveted 10-million-kilometre mark, a target he’s determined to log in his trademark work diary before retirement.
He still has the same passion for the industry as he did when he first started – and his health has never been better since ditching the soft drinks and crap food for healthier choices he buys himself before spending four or five nights away from home at a time.
“My wife is a bit of a gym junkie, and so she always ate healthy, so yeah, she just really trained me into eating healthier.”
When we ask him to reel off some career highlights, he said every day there’s something new to add, he just loves the job that much.
“I’ve done two-up to Perth multiple, multiple times, and that’s just sensational…some of the country I’ve seen.
“In the gas industry, I’m taking liquid oxygen to mines out in the middle of nowhere, other gasses out to the wharves where they put it on the top of fuel for protection – just a vast range of stuff that I didn’t realise was involved in the dangerous goods business, it’s just incredible.
“My wife and I want to go travelling eventually, but at the moment I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and I’ll keep doing it for as long as I can.
“Trucking’s given me a very, very good life.”