“Not having to spend all day associating with clowns” and being able to work for a decent boss was Jon Murray‘s answer when Craig McCauley asked him what his favourite aspects of working in the transport industry are. Jon drives for Foxpine Haulage Ltd and his current rig is a Western Star 4884FXC with 600 Cummins Signature EGR power. He had unloaded logs at the Palmerston North rail yard and was heading home to Feilding at the end of his working week when Craig spoke with him. Growing up in Taihape, Jon spent many hours in the passenger‘s seat of a number of linehaul trucks that passed through the town, including ‘Platoon‘, one of Brenics‘ Western Stars, driven at the time by Aaran Sayer.

In the infancy of social media, Jon used the pioneering X Trucking forum website to make contact with Brendon Johnstone at Brenics, and the end result was that in 2008 he shifted south to Christchurch where his driving career began, doing metropolitan work on ‘Matty Mushroom‘, a Mitsubishi Fighter. Aspects of the trucking life that rate as negatives for Jon include the poor state of New Zealand‘s roads and ‘moronic‘ car drivers with a complete lack of respect for other road users. Jon‘s good crop of facial hair provided the inspiration for New Zealand Trucking magazine‘s vexing question: When it came to shaving time, is the electric shaver or cut-throat razor his weapon of choice? His reply “Cut-throat all the way”.

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