“Dad I want to drive a truck, like you.”

“Don‘t be silly boy. You‘re not going to drive a truck!”

“Aww really? What would you rather do?”

“Nothing…best job in the world.”

The hilarious anecdote is from a conversation between Joe Timothy and his dad Roger so many years ago.

For Roger the battle wasn‘t worth fighting; like him, Joe had diesel in the veins.

Forty-two-year-old Joe is a Pukekohe boy originally, attending Pukekohe North primary in the early years. When Roger left his job on a metal truck at Franklin County Council to take up a position driving for Waikato Pet Foods, he and wife Lovey relocated Joe and his brother and sister to Te Kauwhata, where Joe completed his schooling at the local college.

Out of school ASAP, Joe took up work as a labourer in Auckland before moving to Wellington in 1997 to work in the demolition game. He came back north in 2000 and worked or a short time on a petrol tanker at Vuksich and Borich in Auckland before taking up a role at Dixon and Haddon – still in Auckland – driving a truck with a Hiab.

By 2003 Roger and Lovey had moved to Thames and Roger wasn‘t in the best of health. Joe, wife Jenny and children Starion, Cabatina-Jo, Zariah, Cairo, and Shardae moved to Thames to be closer to Joe‘s mum and dad. Joe got a job working for Peter Chote at Coromandel Meat Transport.

“That was a great year,” said Joe. “I loved the ERF and Louisville, and the crew there was great.”

In 2004 he started working at Provincial Freightlines on a CH Mack B-train curtain unit before moving on to a new Mack Quantum truck and dog curtainside unit.

He stayed on post the Linfox buy out of Provincial Freightlines and Total Transport, and when that company made the decision to discontinue the operation at Kopu, Joe jumped at the chance to be part of newly formed Kiwitrans.

“I love the job, the people and the company,” he says. “It‘s a tight team, the gear‘s great and there‘s a fantastic sense of building something worthwhile.”

So the million-dollar question for Joe was, ‘Are there any diesel heads among your children?‘

“All of them!” he laughed. “I think we‘ll get a couple of truckers out of them, and one could be a girl!”