THE DEFINITIVE TRUCKING SITE

At last, after all these years, I have entered a new year with the full realisation of what I want to be when I grow up. It’s taken many years of deep soulsearching starting as a young lad when my only ambition in life was to be a ‘sleeping train’ driver. That’s what we called the train that chugged through the night taking our family on holiday from Johannesburg to Durban. It just seemed so ‘right’ to be the guy in charge of that train. Instead of bunking down somewhere at the back, you got to sit upfront and steer the thing all the way to Durban. That seemed like a real ‘kewl’ thing to do. But then, as I grew up, my ambition changed. Sitting up front in a train all night seemed a little ‘boring’ compared to some of the other professions I came across. There was so much choice and I was totally confused until one day, it hit me. I wanted to be the ‘man who hangs on the back of a fire engine’. Yep, that was for me. Action man hanging on for dear life as the fire-engine sped towards the scene of another pyrotechnic display. It wasn’t the act of fighting fires that attracted me. Rather, it was the thrill of hanging onto the back with my legs flying out into space as the huge truck screeched around corners to the cheers of thousands of on-lookers. Of course, doing all this to the sound of a blaring siren added the perfect finishing touch. What a wonderful career that would be. Yep, that was for me. But then, as I grew up, my ambition changed and in truth, I went through a number of career changes before I reached high school. During high school, I put my career ambitions on hold as I discovered what was, at the time, the greatest thrill one could ever experience. It was ‘the ‘chase’ and involved bringing all your skills to bear on attracting that gorgeous girl you saw every day on the same bus that took you to school. The chase necessitated everything being put on hold – including school work, homework and all the other sort of sensible career advancing activities one was supposed to indulge in at that age. From aiming for A’s in exams, a barely scrape through D pass seemed like the sensible way to go. It was, in fact, the only way to go as the mind was hardly tuned into academic achievement when all concentration and effort was directed at the great ‘chase’. I was onto big things – hooking up with my lifetime companion, the future mother of my future children. School work seemed so small and insignificant in comparison to this heady ambition. Alas, I was rejected. She never did mother my children. I’ve hated buses ever since. 

From then until 1975 I tried a number of different career options which included a year in a Christian Brothers novitiate; selling insurance for about a month until I ran out of relatives; a stint in the SA Blood Transfusion Services in Hillbrow as a blood technician; an apprentice electrician and fridge mechanic in my late dad’s business; a year as a truck driver for Colgate Palmolive in the then Zimbabwe; and even a stint at University in a rather grand but futile attempt to follow in the academic footsteps of my medical orientated mom, brother and uncles. Serving on the Rag committee and playing soccer didn’t really fit in with the required regimen needed to become a leading brain transplant surgeon. I later even did a stint as a game ranger where my highest salary cheque came to R10. They always took the bar tab off the salary first. It was blissful times and then, in 1975, I stumbled upon journalism. I loved the thrill of newspapers but there were better things to come. In 1976, I by chance was appointed assistant editor of Commercial Transport, a trucking magazine - and it is in this wonderful industry that I have lived happily ever since. Alas, things have now changed and the events of the past few months have shown me it was not a ‘grown up’ decision at all. For the past 35 years I have been writing on this wonderful trucking industry but I'm sorry to say, it was the wrong career choice. I now know for sure what I want to be when I grow up. A banker. Yep, that’s what I want to be - a banker. 

Banking is where it’s at. Just look at what’s happened overseas. There were the bankers having great fun gathering in useless mortgages and then repackaging them as attractive sell-ons which, in fact, were not worth the cigarette boxes they were scribbled on. They knew that but because everyone trusted bankers as being honourable and upright citizens, no one bothered to query the deals. The end result is that their actions led to the near-collapse of the financial system both in the USA and the UK. I say near collapse because without the bailout packages offered by the respective governments, many of those banks would have been out of it. Without going into all the ramifications – you’ve probably read it all ad nauseum – these geniuses of the financial world went about their dastardly deeds with scant regard to the universal chaos they were about to cause. While the bailout packages are tenuously holding the banks together, they haven’t been able to prevent the landslide economic chaos and fallout that has hit the world. And now, after all this, I see the bank executives want to award themselves huge bonuses in recognition and appreciation of the wonderful job they have done in messing up the world. Now that, to me, smacks of a real ‘grown up’ career choice. It caters for every eventuality. Even when you destroy everything around you through sheer greed, you get rewarded for doing so. And all these years I – along with many other people in the trucking industry - have been under the false impression that hard work, productivity and performance will get you the bonus. How childish I have been! I can kick myself for that. And then, on top of all that, once you've been bailed out, you get to clamp down on the good guys - like truckers - by implementing new credit criteria that makes it impossible for the good guys to access finance; and you do it in such a way that everyone around starts to feel guilty that it’s them that caused the crisis. What a great career choice. You win no matter what direction you take. 

So, that’s it. I’m now going to apply to the International Bankers Rip the Guts Out of It Association for a job. But - what if they don’t accept me? Well, I’ll be sad but I have found a second choice. I’ll merely become a politician in the South African government. But hold on. There’s a link here. Haven’t I now done the full circle? That will take me back to my early day career choice of being a train driver. Nah. It’s OK. When I was small, I wanted to drive the ‘sleeping train’. I’ll now be driving the ‘gravy train’. Ah! That sounds much better. 

Happy 2009 to all our great readers and advertisers. And to heck with the trains and everything else. I just love trucking – as you do. So let’s keep doing it. Let’s keep on trucking through the tough times into a bright future.

Patrick O'Leary
Managing Editor