NZ Trucking Association president Rob Taylor was filling up at the BP truck stop in Levin when Faye Lougher caught up with him. Driving the impressive Safety MAN truck, Rob was heading to Auckland for the Truck and Machinery Show where the interactive truck would help educate the public how to be safe around big trucks. Taking it to schools for the same purpose is another important job for the truck. When asked how he got into the industry, Rob said he blamed his parents.

“I think I may have been conceived in a truck!” he laughed. “I‘ve been in them since I was three, so I didn‘t have a show really. Dad was a delivery driver for a plumber‘s merchant, but he also spent a lot of time in the Coromandel driving for Provincial and Heatons.” Rob has been driving trucks since he was 18, a total of 51 years behind the wheel. “I love the people I meet, lovely people,” he says. The issues facing the industry today that Rob identified were familiar ones. “The nutters on the road and the road condition,” he said. Ford or Holden? “Holden” was the emphatic response.

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