Father & Son. Part 2: The Son

In-depth

1 Sept

Neil Haywood

Neil Haywood was always going to follow his father, Wilf into trucking. Born in 1959, he was around trucks ever since he could remember.

"As a kid I knew nothing else but trucks. I was lucky, in that around the corner, about a quarter of a mile from where I lived in the Melbourne suburb of South Blackburn, was Lance Smith's Heavy Haulage. I was that annoying little kid that was always hanging around their trucks.

"Also around the corner was Norm Gown's Engine Developments. I was split between hanging around at Norm Gown's (who later became famous in 1975 for the L34Torana that Peter Brock won Bathurst in), and Lance Smith's. I went on many trips with the Lance Smith guys on school holidays. You couldn't keep me out of the trucks.”

**A 12 year old Neil at Lance Smith's yard, Rooks Rd.**

"In 1975 I started my apprenticeship with Mack Trucks in Brisbane, which was organised by Lance Smith's. It was a big move for a young fella. That didn't work out so I moved back to Melbourne before completing my apprenticeship. 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing. I suppose things weren't as bad as I thought they were and I should have hung in there. But anyway, that's life.”

"I met lots of people through Norm Gowan. Some of the guys were from MacFie Transport who used to run theV12 Kenworths in the mid '70s. When I got a car licence I was loading trailers for Wards Overnight Express. I had the opportunity to work for Bruce MacFie when I was 18, running around Melbourne loading trailers. Bruce would send me off from Kensington to Dandenong in a truck (with a car licence) to load fibreglass batts on top of freight or go to Dunlop Olympic and load tyres.

"I turned 19 in the January and a month later I got my truck licence. One Saturday night one of the drivers got sick and Bruce MacFie gave me my first trip to Sydney in a FR700 Mack with a sleeper cab (yee har!), which was a luxurious truck in its day. Within two months they gave me my own truck.”

**Neil drove this until Brice MacFie died. The company was eventually closed**

"A family friend was working for Colin Clark of Clark Refrigerated Transport. “Would you like to come driving fridge fans?" This was a no-brainer as the work involved in loading flat tops was immense. I grabbed the offer and started driving fridge vans at not quite 20.

"I left Clark's and worked for Collin Bennetts in South Australia, driving a wine tanker. I ended up back in Victoria working for MacFie’s again. I bounced around between them and Alf Marsden. The winters in Melbourne were getting to me so I moved to Brisbane where I worked for a few people. Then it was back again to MacFie's. Bruce died and Frank Agostino wound up the company. I ended up being taken out of the Atkinson that I was in and put in a Louisville at Eastoes.

"I remember moving my furniture in an Eastoes van, atop a load of margarine at 3AM in the morning. I was pretty pleased with myself until the cops turned up, accusing me of robbing the house. I mean, who would be stupid enough to rob a house in a company van? I had to explain to them that I was moving to Queensland. Nothing wrong with a bit of back loading is there?

"I did load loader work and then went back onto the highway working for Keith McCann from Stanthorpe, then a bloke called Gary Russell driving a SuperLiner. Eventually I progressed to Roadmaster and worked there until January '93 driving a V8 ValueLiner.”

**Neil’s first truck, that his dad helped with**

"Coming out of Bulahdelah at a place called Ashley's Hill – the drivers used to know it as Steps and Stairs – I had a serious accident. It was my fault. Had I been going slower it wouldn't have happened. I punched my left leg out the back of my pelvis – which is now all fused. I had many surgeries and a reconstruction done. The biggest problem was that the femur caught the sciatic nerve when it punched out my pelvis. The scar tissue on the sciatic nerve then attached itself to everything inside, leaving me a bit of a mess.

"To try and see whether I could go back driving, I drove a Western Star for a friend of mine. After three or four months my leg was giving me a lot of trouble and I went back off the road for a little while.

"I ended up with a little bit of money from the insurance company. At the time the M1 was being built between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. I got the offer of buying a truck and dog cheap, and started doing asphalt work. I basically bought myself a job. With my crook leg, there were days that I just couldn’t go to work. As an owner-driver it gave me a little bit of leeway."

At 64, and battling with ill health over the past few years, Neil’s driving days are now behind him. But the memories persist. At the recent Brisbane Truck Show, I ran into Neil for the first time in a number of years. The conversation traversed many things but ended with his dad, Wilf. As he talked of his dad, Neil’s eyes moistened.

Wilf Haywood and Neil Haywood, Father and Son, Mate and Mate. Sharing a burning love for each other and a passion for the trucks and the industry that provided for their livelihoods over the decades.