I had one guy come up to me and say, ‘I don’t like the look of your truck.’ ‘Oh. that’s good’,’ I said. ‘I didn’t bloody buy it for you!’” says Kevin Hartley.

Obviously, the fellow with the comment didn’t know Kevin that well. Spend a day in his company and you’ll soon learn he absolutely wouldn’t care one jot if you did or didn’t like his truck. And anyone approaching him in such a disrespectful way would likely not leave his company without receiving a few incredibly well-constructed summations on the shortcomings in the industry in 2022. Had they been persistent in their disrespect, neither would he hesitate in implicating their personal shortcomings in the wider industry issues.

Kevin Hartley. A son of the Taranaki region, lifetime trucker, an owner-driver for more than two decades, farmer, businessman and grafter. At a time when the world seems toxified with paralysing overthought, apathy, disinterest, and complexity, it’s so refreshing to find someone like him. Someone who is an ardent believer in facts like hard work, not wheel polish and excuses, pays off mortgages.

Is it, therefore, surprising to find this genuine hard-case grafter, a man who will keep your ribs aching for hours with his razor-like wit, sitting in his two-year-old Mecedes- Benz Arocs 3263 8×4? A StreamSpace cab variant, dripping with tech and void of mirrors? This monster Euro brute complete with Euro-style roof-mount lights compels you to check Google Earth to clarify you’re in the forests around Strathmore and not Saxony.

The answer? No, it most certainly isn’t surprising at all. It’s an irony you often find in trucking these days. Those who missed the previous generation are the ones desperate to replicate it, maybe to prove something to themselves or others. While at the same time, those who lived it all previously are equally desperate for the advances that mean they don’t have to relive it again.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” says Kev resolutely (the only way he speaks in all reality). We were rolling up the reprehensibly greasy and woefully inadequate SH43 north from Stratford towards a woodlot on Brewer Road near Strathmore. “Look at the space. Listen to how quiet it is. It’s had three COFs in its 265,000km, every one of them a clean sheet. I have a house and farm, and I’ve been an owner-driver for more than 20 years, the last couple here. It’s not about the bling and Autosol for me. I still enjoy it, but it’s a tool. I want something safe, quiet, comfortable, with some guts.

“I’m 52. I’ll do one more after this, and then that’s it. I want to be out by the time I’m 60 and work on my farm. There’s a lot of camaraderie gone from the trucking industry, and a friendly wave now depends on what you’re driving and who you work for.

“I’ve done the freight thing with the big corporates. You can keep it. Give me this any day. You can make a good living, and Warwick [Lupton], and Chris [Purcell], the owners of Total Log Haulage, are bloody great to work for. It’s a family business, and that’s how you’re treated. They never pass without stopping for a chat, and they always fill you in on what’s going on, whether it’s good or bad news. Put it this way, whatever you’re thinking, you can ask them without a second thought. They’re bang-on in my book.”

Speaking of bang-on, let’s get to the nitty-gritty – meaning what’s behind us and how we know it’s there!

“If you’re wired negative as a person, you’ll find fault in anything. I’d seen them [MirrorCam] on YouTube and didn’t hesitate to give it a go. I won’t say it was a compelling reason for choosing the Merc, that was more price and standard features, but once I’d made that choice, I gave them a go.

“Yep, they’re fine. I like them. I get a much wider field of view just as a matter of course. Before adjusting anything, I can sit here and see the second steer and the other lane, all from the normal driving position. Then I can adjust them out, so the main mirror is almost picking up objects at 80° to where I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. The little warning light there means they need a minor calibration – it’s nothing.

“They also increase the left and right clearance vision hugely because there are no mirrors to look past and around. I can pull down the side blinds when the sun’s coming in the side window, and I lose no rear vision at all because the screen’s on the inside. When I open the door, I also get an unimpaired rear view. The cameras and screens don’t move with the door, so if I’ve had a momentary lapse and go to open the door to get out and there’s a cyclist or something there, I see them.

“In low light they show a clear, bright image, far brighter than ambient outside. I can configure lines that show me distances to the rear, but I don’t use them anymore. I know where the back of it and the things around me are. I’m so used to it.

“With this one being so high, I don’t get much in the way of contamination from the wheels. Look at today, raining, yet no spray is reaching the cameras. They’re mint. I would imagine in some jobs with the low cabs you might get a bit. But then cleaning them is as simple as reaching up, and with a tiny flick of the camera, it’s done. Because the screens are on the A-pillars, when I’m driving out the bush roads, I can look ahead and behind me almost at the same time.

“Security also. If I’m in the sleeper at night and I think someone’s out there, I can just flick them on.

“No, I can’t fault them. I had a CVST officer pull me up, and he was going to get stuck into me for driving a truck that I’d wiped both mirrors off. ‘I haven’t got any mirrors,’ I said,” Kevin laughed. “Yep, it looks different, but I like it.”

And so, to finish, a critic who takes no prisoners on any subject, Kevin Hartley has lived with MirrorCam for probably as long as anyone in the country – more than most. His is an acid test. And his is one they have passed.