They say never meet your heroes as dissolution is often found in the wake of disappointment. Thankfully, the road transport industry has formed the backdrop to the bulk of my life, and among the endless gifts it continues to rain upon me is the reality that every hero to date has lived up to expectation.

The dynamic linehaul duo of Guy and Helen Knowles is no exception. This match made in highway heaven has lived and breathed trucking together for more than three and half decades, and it was trucking that brought them together. Guy, the indefatigable linehauler, and Helen – or ‘Aunty H’ as the industry affectionately knows her – the maître d’ at Stag Park all those years ago. That said, this union of boundless potential was in no way a fait accompli according to Helen. “He turned me down the first time I asked him if he wanted to go out!” Thankfully a friend steered the wounded and the overly focused back in each other’s direction and the rest, as they say, is polish and productivity; a.k.a. history.

Guy Knowles, the archetypal glass half full, no job’s too big – or too small – linehaul trucker, who like so many of his era wrote the book on hard work and devotion in an industry they loved. Aunty H, the ultimate wing-woman whose need or desire for personal aggrandisement is zero; her personal KPI the happiness and contentedness of anyone tied to the vision. Hers is the perfect face to greet you with a home-cooked meal and a drink after a hard week delivering the goods – that goes for all the team. She knew at the outset what the vision was and there was no going back. They’re as smitten with each other and their boutique bounty-green fleet today as they’ve ever been. Their home is a shrine to the brand they’ve built and the machines that have served their part. Images of loyal mechanical servants past line the hallway of fame leading from the lounge to the work boots in the garage.

Guy’s demeanour and refusal to see anything but the good in an industry that would appear to have rewarded him for his service often creates the wrong impression among those who don’t know him or Aunty H well. Following another upbeat and inspiring visit some years ago, I recall leaving the yard and premises in Palmerston North, when the person accompanying me attempted to utter the ‘Luc..’ word in regard to what they had just been party to. I was sabre- like in cutting them off before the ‘ky’ embarrassed them totally, saying “If you had to do what they have done to get what you’ve just seen, you’d run a mile.” Trucking never rewards the idle.

As an industry colleague shared recently, recalling the Guy Knowles week that was, well beyond four decades ago … Loading and covering general freight for Auckland ex-Wellington on a Friday night that was then unloaded and stacked carefully in the Child Freighters Palmerston North depot. Reload with farm equipment and with his trusted four-legged Alsatian companion, Duke, a delivery round of North Island machinery outlets commenced. Arriving back into Palmerston North at some time on Sunday evening, the Auckland freight was reloaded and the next week’s work commenced. I myself recall the original Razor Sharp V8 Mack thumping through the Hauraki Plains hamlet of Ngatea on more than one Saturday afternoon loaded in that manner.

Another anecdote from someone equally well versed in the industry of the era, who recalls being impressed at how well his 440hp Mercedes-Benz was hanging onto Razor Sharp on the climb to the Desert Road summit, only to find later that the only similarity between the two truck’s vital statistics was the one’s payload, and the other’s gross.

As we found with Matt Sherlock two years ago, the art of changing times is changing with them, and as long as trucks have cabs, decks, loads, and need driving, Guy Knowles won’t be far away from trucking. “I love it, I absolutely love it. Loading, driving, serving the customers, seeing something delivered just as it went on, I just love it. It’s all pretty easy today, the gear is great, we keep things in trim as they need to be. You have to change, you know? And in many ways it’s for the better. We worked hard back then, crikey driver, did we what!” He rolls his eyes. “Today has its own challenges, by crikey it does, but you have to do it right, all the ‘t’s crossed and ‘i’s dotted – there’s enough to do, you have to keep the noise out of the business. Yeah, it’s all good really.”

A leader who leads from the front with an infectious enthusiasm for not just everything about trucking, but his brand of trucking. He’s impossible to impersonate, and difficult to quote on paper in the way he would say whatever it is you’re attempting to convey. Like his machines, Guy Knowles is his own brand, idiosyncratic, and unique.

The Knowles business is a bastion for the truly vocational trucker – for they are the only breed who will survive here. In the words of one ex-employee, “It’s full emersion”.

Come Friday night and Saturday, the yard is a frenzy of truck washing, polishing, tinkering, and banter. Just how the Knowleses like it. Keeping the visual image up harks back to the beginning as an around-town driver at Child Freighters in Palmerston North. Those who were around the truck show scene of the early 1990s will recall the lineage of Guy Knowles V8 Macks regularly amassing a boot-load of trophies.

Then there was the time Wellington-based linehaul trucker of the era, Ken Kirk, and I witnessed Razor Sharp thundering into Wellington in the pouring rain and wind on the night before a Lions Club Lower Hutt Truck Show of the early 1990s. “Surely not?” I said. Knowing Guy far better than I, Ken glanced across the car with a wry smile, “He will.”

Little did I know there were helpers with buckets, brushes, sponges, polish, and rags waiting in a shed in Trentham, and so to tweak a famous ‘Obama-ism’ … ’yes he did’.

If you think it’s about ego, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Passion: the word is often written about, and rarely defined as well as this “living the dream, driver” reality.

The one subject Guy Knowles won’t entertain is his age, the reason being its irrelevance when you love what you do and are still capable of presenting yourself at the go line come Monday morning. He has no intention of hanging up the keys anytime soon. Buying them, building them, loading and unloading them, driving them, customer satisfaction – he revels in it all. He is truly the sum of all trucking parts, and therein lays the answer to the next question.

Could it have been a bigger operation than the five superb chariots and their custodians? Absolutely it could, both Guy and Helen will tell you, and shake their heads over the enquiry that just doesn’t stop currently. But the answer comes back to the beginning of the piece – know what it is you do, for whom, why, and the boundaries you set. This is the business Guy and Helen want – one in which they can service their clientele 100%, stay involved at the frontlines, where hard-working loyal operators are more than staff, where standards of presentation and service can be maintained at the highest level, and where the man whose name is on the door knows everyone in his business from forklift drivers to financiers.

“I want our customers to see their product go on one of our trucks and think ‘If that’s the care shown to the truck, my product must be in good hands’.

“Having the fleet around the size we do allows overheads to be kept to a minimum. I don’t need a dispatcher, a crew in the office. It’s a model that allows us to remain price-competitive. I do the pricing, Aunty H takes care of the invoicing and we’re all good. It works for us and many customers who value the personal service.”

Guy and Helen provide an incredible sanctuary for those in both their employment keep and broad circle of suppliers and friends. As you’ll have gleaned by now, everyone is tagged ‘driver’, an expression of camaraderie and acknowledgement that you too are part of the industry they love. You know you’ve really made it when you get addressed by first and second names – again, it’s a quirk of the man.

Although invoicing, admin, and compliance are Aunty H’s official labours, her true passion is filling the tummies of anyone within a five-mile radius and ensuring they’re well, full, happy … and ready. Like the James shed in Tokoroa or the Te Huia man cave in Coromandel, theirs is an easy place to be on a Friday arvo – a malt smoothie and a yarn about the one subject everyone loves … trucking. And like the other two venues, who you’ll find there is often telling in its own right – staff, suppliers, customers, colleagues; a relaxing sanctuary of like-minds.

“The big thing with Guy and Helen is the passion they have for their business, their trucks, and the way their drivers have the same amount of pride and passion,” says Southpac salesman, mate, and trucker himself, Steve Herring. He’s managed the Knowles account almost the whole way.

Of course, it is trucking and that means it never really stops, and there’s always the weekly Saturday/Sunday return run to Auckland to keep in mind. That means one person has to abstain at the Friday wind-down in the interests of maintaining the ultimate objective – customer satisfaction.

You didn’t really just wonder who that might be, did you?