It’s amazing how perception changes as one grows and – whisper it – ages. As a child, you can’t wait to turn 18, to be an ‘adult’. By the time you’re that age, even the thought of turning 40 or 50 still seems a lifetime away. Then, one day – I’m told – you’re left looking back wondering where it all went.

Looking at the changing world around them, each generation gets its turn to lament. ‘Back in my day’, and all that. Environments, attitudes, priorities, and ways of thinking might change, but I believe that, fundamentally, the more things change, the more people stay the same.

At any time in any society or subset, there will always be that undesirable element that ruins it for everyone else – self-interested, uncouth, loutish, criminal. There will also always be the good buggers – who have everyone’s back, stop at nothing to get the job done, humbly mop up the mess, and generally try to make society a better place. And then, there’s everyone in the middle who just wants to get on with life. Gavin’s guide to society in a nutshell…

Apply that to trucking and the parallels are plain to see. Regulation that’s become an increasing burden exists because there’s some undesirable element that needs to be kept in line and a need to ensure a level playing field. In part, anyway… That one’s probably too complicated to unpack in a year’s worth of magazines.

It goes without saying that the bulk of the industry occupies the latter two regions of the scale. There’s the majority who simply get on with the job and keep the wheels turning, nobody any the wiser. And then there are the good buggers of the industry – humble, committed, principled, forward-thinking. They’ll give you the time of day and you’ll always come away perceptibly richer from the experience.

Recently, I’ve encountered quite a few people who fit this mould, both of the old-school and younger. Meeting them is always a reminder of all the good this industry represents. It’s very much a perk of this job and often my measure is coming away from the encounter thinking, “If I gave up this magazine gig to get behind the wheel, I’d happily go drive for them.”

For an industry trying to get on with the job amidst hegemonic ideology, competition, media portrayal and public perception, those kinds of encounters are critical. With Covid restrictions banished to memory in September and truck show calendars filling up again, the opportunity is ripe for good PR. But I’d like to encourage the creation of those opportunities and encounters too. It’s up to the industry, as a whole and at the individual level, to go out of its way to promote its good name.

We’ve seen the upshot of this sort of effort through our sister magazine Little Trucker Down Under, which after a year of publication has exceeded expectation and really driven home how much trucks capture the imagination of who we like to consider the truckies of the future. We’re told by teachers that when each new issue appears in the classroom, the kids can’t get enough of it.

And when all is said and done, it’s these kids, the future truckies and members of society, who will grow up in a changing world with changing perceptions, but we pray will look at the trucks around them with an enhanced appreciation.

Go, the good buggers. Go tomorrow’s truckies.