When he arrived six years ago, Glen Mosely was the first sidelift driver at Les Harrison’s Mt Maunganui branch. “Work has picked up a bit since then,” he says with a chuckle.

Glen started driving at 20 when he found himself looking for a career change. “I was working as a security guard, and an agricultural contracting job came up with Jackson Agricultural Contracting in Te Pahu, so I thought I’d give that a go,” he explains.

He spent time carting maise and grass in a two-axle truck before joining Gilmours Hamilton, doing deliveries. “Gilmours put me through my class 4,” Glen says.

“Then a job came up for a Swinglift driver at LCL, back when they were still running. They put me up to class 5 with forklift, dangerous goods, and wheels, tracks and rollers. When they sold out, I went to Australia.”

Glen found himself behind the wheel of an FH Volvo with 620 Cummins doing general interstate freight. After six years in Australia and missing his two kids growing up, Glen returned to New Zealand.

He adds: “The kids have no interest in trucks yet, but I’ll hopefully try to keep them away from it,” he jokes. “It’s not that it’s a bad lifestyle, but they’re a lot smarter than I am. So, hopefully, they’ll have even more opportunity.”

Back in New Zealand, Glen found himself on the road, carting milk powder out of Reporoa for NZL Group. “But I quite enjoyed doing this sort of job [sidelifts], so when my mate rang me up and told me Les Harrison was starting up in Tauranga, I chucked my name down,” he says.

“I’ve lived all over the place, but Tauranga has always been home. And Les Harrison’s a good crowd to work with. They don’t push you; there’s always tomorrow.”

Life’s necessities

Glen Mosely’s unit, LHT92, was one of the first new 700s to join the fleet. Coupled with its new tri-axle Patchell Swinglift 3SMSL-40 trailer, the rig went on the road in May and has clocked up just north of 26,000km.

Today Glen will head out to Essity Kawerau to collect three container loads of life’s most important paper in its unfinished form and deliver them to the Port of Tauranga, bound for Melbourne. There are 17 massive reels of unfinished toilet paper per container for an overall load of 19.4 tonnes. Glen’s already done his first run for the day by the time we meet him at the depot.

He approaches with a smile and a firm handshake, and we waste no time discussing his new charge. While we think it looks just as good in truck-tractor configuration, we’re surprised when Glen comments: “It pretty much blends in. A lot of people can’t immediately tell the difference.” Then he quips: “At least these bumpers shouldn’t be as expensive to replace as the chrome ones!” Yes, some local operators might miss those…

Departing the Mount along the SH2 Tauranga Eastern Link allows Glen to demonstrate the merits of the new 700’s SmartSafe suite of active safety features. Standard fitment on the FS, SmartSafe incorporates the pre-collision system with safety eye; autonomous emergency braking and pedestrian detection; driver monitor; lane departure warning system (LDWS); and adaptive cruise control.

The suite finally brings the big Hino in line with the latest safety-laden offerings from Fuso (New Zealand Trucking, July 2022) and UD (New Zealand Trucking, March 2022). And as we reported in last month’s issue, the latest Isuzu Giga offers a similar suite, too. In a world where comprehensive electronic safety systems are an absolute necessity and buyers are ever-more health- and-safety minded, the Japanese truck safety-tech playing field has, finally, well and truly been levelled.

Glen locks the adaptive cruise onto the vehicle ahead, and the 700 maintains the set gap and speed with ease. It offers a following distance ranging from 35m to 100m and will automatically engage the engine brake to maintain speed once the vehicle ahead exceeds 3kph over the set limit.