Vocational trucker Grant Wilkins is happily surrounded by the industry he was born into – father, brothers, cousins, they’re everywhere and have all drawn a living from driving. We sat down for a chat with this passionate realist, about doing it from the ground up.

I worked on farms in the ‘Murch’ [Murchison] area when I was at school,” says 42-year-old Grant Wilkins with a smirk everyone north of 40 knows well. “‘I’ll drive your tractors and do your farm work, but I won’t milk your cows’, I used to say. If I’d milked cows I would have been there forever! I didn’t want to get into the milking cows racket.”

It couldn’t have possibly been cows. Cows are a tie, and people born into this industry tend not to excel in jobs that are a tie.

The truth is it was never going to be anything but trucks for Grant and his brother Bob. Both his father Paul and grandfather Robert ‘Toby’ Wilkins were truck drivers. Paul started his career in trucks working for the Ministry of Works and Grant says this is where his first memories of his Dad’s work life start. He then took a job at TNL’s Murchison depot working under Alan ‘Big Al’ Bradley driving a Mercedes-Benz spreader. He progressed from the spreader onto an N-Series Volvo when his brother-in-law and fleet driver Charlie Lynch took on an owner-driver gig at the company. Charlie was married to Paul’s sister Rhona, and ran successive V8 Mack Ultra-Liners on stock as an owner-driver, one a 525hp and then a 575hp; it didn’t get any slicker back in the day … probably wouldn’t now.

From the Volvo, Paul moved on to a Mitsubishi carting produce south and resin back to the Nelson Pine board mill in Richmond. It was the first of two Mitsis he drove for the famous transport brand, and trucks Grant would go on to drive when he was passing through class 4 qualification on his licence journey.

Following a spell working for local company Nelson Lakes Transport Paul returned to TNL, this time working for owner-driver Mike Babcock, double-shifting a Kenworth K104 on a week-about Nelson/Christchurch freight run that swapped at Murchison.

It all meant the action for the young Wilkins lads was big, real, and constant. From an early age they could be found happily riding shotgun with Dad in a TNL rig, or thump-thumping up the road with Uncle Charlie.

“I remember going to Christchurch when Dad drove a F10 Volvo. If it was the holidays Mum would come also, and I would fall asleep on the engine tunnel, with my feet hanging over one side and head over the other!”

Networks and knowledge

Post-school Grant moved to Nelson taking work at a local sawmill. Terry Chapman was a Murchison bloke who was working in management at TNL and he knew the young Wilkins well. He phoned Grant about a cadetship and at just under 20 years of age, Grant found himself at the firm that provided so much of his childhood entertainment and put food on the family table. He worked his way up through classes 2 to 5 with MasterDrive’s David Semaine overseeing progress. Interestingly David’s still in the training business today with wife Robyn, operating Platinum Driver Training in Nelson.

Grant started where you did back then, on an around- town Isuzu delivering beer kegs before moving on to a Mitsubishi Fighter and larger freight deliveries. A bigger 8×4 Mitsubishi saw him into class 4 and 5 work as well as stretching his legs out to Blenheim and the districts beyond.

Then came the jump to a bigger truck. A Freightliner Argosy curtain-sider with Caterpillar C12 power. “Shit, it was a rough-riding thing!” he says with a laugh. “My first week on it the boss said ‘are you right to go to Auckland?’ So, I was going to Auckland. I got held up waiting for a home load and ended up having to run through the night back to Wellington to catch the ferry. I was shitting myself. I latched on to someone and followed them down but that was not fun!

“I carted fish out of Picton to Dunedin, that was good work, I enjoyed that. I remember the first load I ever did just happened to coincide with ‘O’ week in Dunedin … yes, that was ‘interesting’. There was certainly plenty to see.”

Hitting your straps

Lift-out siders marketh the metal of the man, a clear sign you’ve come of age because all the skillsets have to be present. By his mid-20s, Grant was moved on to a DAF 85CF 430 lift-out sider kitted out with drain channels and tanks for carting mussels. “I actually spent most of the time with the sides out, they were 1.4m high and so weren’t a lot of use for anything.”

With the arrival of daughter Maddison, Grant needed to be home a little more often, for a while at least. He came out of the DAF and into a Freightliner Century Class on a Nelson/ Christchurch grocery swap, meeting the northbound unit at Maruia between Murchison and Springs Junction. “That was an education. It amazed me how people would park in the loading zones at the supermarkets and then want you to move so they could leave. ‘Agh … no’.”

A year on the grocery work, and he was back on a lift-out sider. This time a brand-new machine, an Isuzu GIGA 530 with an AMT transmission. Grant spent six years in the big ‘Suzy’ and said “It wasn’t a bad truck at all”. He did mussels, timber, rural, and general on linehaul around the South Island – one of those jobs where you see all kinds of places, meet all kinds of people, and have all kinds of adventures. “Yeah like going to Godley Peak Station at Tekapo with a load of pipe and needing to be dragged all the way in.”

Grant was with the truck right through the tenure of its lease at TNL.

Variation is the spice of life and a Western Star 4864 and 15m flat-deck quad-semi is about as far from the Isuzu lift-out side truck and trailer as you could get.

“Yeah, it was okay – hot and loud, but it went good,” says Grant. The Star ran a 15-litre Detroit Diesel and Eaton 18-speed AMT trans, with the bulk of the work profile house frames, general, and concrete pipe.

“It wasn’t that suited to the pipe work. The attack angle was not as good as the Isuzu, so it would foul at the front, and then getting up onto some sites it would hang three of the four semi axles on occasions. Sometimes the pipe would break, there was that much stress. It did bloody well really.

“I loved the general work, loading freight and then covering it so the covers were tight without flaw, and then heading up the road. I remember one day I got 120 cube on the big semi–breaking down pallets and hand stacking.”

Green shoots

“The marriage fell apart and I’d had a enough of the linehaul. Just a messy stage in life. I asked the boss if I could come off linehaul work and he said it was that or nothing. So ‘we’ chose the latter.”

That was seven years ago and Stuart Drummond Transport was looking for a relief driver come yardman. Grant thought that to be just the ticket, so applied, and got the job.

“I did that for a couple of years and really enjoyed it, after which an opportunity came up to go into operations and give that a go. Like all operations jobs it had its moments, but to be fair I’d probably not been in the log game long enough to have the core knowledge for the operations role. Also, being a driver didn’t help because as soon as you were short of hands you’d get back behind the wheel to make up the numbers.”

A bit over a year in operations and he was back on the road in a Cummins EGR-powered T408 Kenworth long-shorts unit, ex-Aaron Hamilton at Pan Pac.

“I’ve sort of found my home with logs, I really enjoy them. I like doing something different and so the long-shorts thing suits. It’s always good, challenging driving too.”

Just under two years ago, Grant was handed the keys to a new T610, a truck its owner Brodie Drummond had given him input into speccing.

“That was cool having a say in it. It gives you a sense of ownership in the final product. Brodie had driven a long- shorts unit himself and my cousin Bevan Lynch [Charlie’s son] worked in the office at Drummonds and he’d driven at McCarthy Transport, so there was a lot of knowledge to tap into.

“I’m rapt with it, it’s a bloody nice machine.”

The T610 has the venerable Cummins X-15, 18-speed Eaton Roadranger manual transmission and Rockwell 46-160 rears on AG460 suspension. Log gear and four-axle trailer is of course Patchell Industries – a stalwart brand in the Drummond fleet. There’s nothing about the unit that won’t stand the test of time.

Grant works the Tasman region predominantly, in both on- and sometimes off-highway log work. Once longs units defined the genre, now there’s a novelty value in operating an on-highway longs unit. Having the Goldpine post and pole mill in the Golden Downs Forest ensures longs configuration is not a once-in-a-while thing.

A truckie’s way

Fighting who you are can be a road to ruin; embracing it an adventure. There’s no question when you’re with Grant in the truck there’s an instant awareness he was born into this gig, it’s in his blood.

There’s a lineage to both celebrate and draw on. Those raised in the game by the old heads never flout their capabilities because the minute you think you know trucking … you discover you don’t. Trucking is the endless education, and Grant the embodiment of the humble capability trucking instils in its true graduates. It was partner Emma’s pride in her man’s achievements and the new Kenworth that led us here.

Grant’s son Toby, named in honour of his great-grandfather Robert’s nickname, will choose his own path, but when the prolonged stare at a passing rig invariably happens, there’s no doubt he’ll be in good hands.

Paul’s story completed

Just to tie up the story’s loose ends on Paul’s story for you propeller heads. After TNL Paul took work at Murchison Transport, which became part of Bulk and General who were in turn eventually bought out by Westport’s icon trucking brand Johnson Brothers. With the Hilton Haulage buyout of Johnson’s in 2023 Paul has taken a retirement job driving a local school bus in Murchison.