Richard Thomas from Dynes Transport was manning the Omarama ‘pump truck‘, pumping milk over into other Dynes Transport and Temuka Transport trucks when Craig Andrews caught up with him just north of the small Mackenzie Country town. Richard was born in Tapanui where he spent a fair chunk of his life painting and decorating for a living. He and his wife Karen moved to Australia in 2002 but moved back to New Zealand in May last year. Richard starting truck driving about 11 years ago in Australia, most of it on road trains, and mainly Kenworth and Mack.

He took up a position with Dynes in September last year to help carry milk. The pump truck is a 2011 T408 Kenworth with more than 1.7 million kilometres on it now. “She‘s a bit of a rough riding thing,” says Richard.

But every day there is something different to see for Richard and he enjoys the scenery that this part of the world offers him. “Plenty of fresh air and sunshine.” He struggles to find a negative but believes some of our infrastructure could be better, saying it‘s not that user-friendly sometimes. Once his day was finished in Omarama, he then took a load of milk back to Clandeboye.

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