“I Have a Dream”

In-depth

27 Aug

Jeremy Fitzgerald is nothing, if not methodical in his approach to life and career.

Leaving school at 17 he worked as an offsider for a removalist company. “They contracted to interstate guys who would come through town and needed a hand to load and unload their trucks. Basically I was a human forklift.

“Looking at those rigs, however, made me realise what I wanted to do in life. And that was interstate trucking. I joined the Army at 19 wanting to be a truck driver, but the recruiters talked me out of it, saying I would get bored driving trucks. They were persuasive at the time so I joined as a combat engineer and ended up in Townsville.

“I spent 4 ½ years in the Army and all that time I wanted to be behind the wheel. I investigated transferring to the transport corps, but they said it would take up to 2 years to get me on a course. The Army gives you a bit of money and some time off work to pursue civilian up-skilling and employment training prior to leaving so I used that to get my heavy rigid license at 23.”

“Within a couple of weeks I was working for Toll, driving HR’s. In June, 2014, I got my MC licence. So there I am with a Multi Combination license but I really had no idea what I was doing. Opportunities to use the license in Townsville were fairly limited so I left Toll and approached another removalist company. In the interview I mentioned my past experience and that I now had an MC licence.

“The bloke said, ‘Great, we’ll chuck you in with someone doing local deliveries while you figure out how to load the truck and then we’ll put you in a B double down to Brisbane’. The loading of course I knew, but the thought of being thrown into a B double by myself freaked me out a little - no one was actually going to teach me?

“I was always under the impression that when I got into driving there would be some sort of ongoing training apart from just getting my license. Even if someone had shared a couple of trips with me I might have been okay.

“I had left Toll looking for opportunities and this had come up. But a man has to know his limitations and a totally inexperienced MC driver was a danger to me and others, so I went back to HR work. It was disappointing at the time, I can tell you.

“In early 2017 my wife, Hailee, got a job in Adelaide and so we moved down there. By now I have set myself a five-year goal to get into interstate work. I had a mate who drove Adelaide - Perth with HPS Transport. He raved about the company. I knew that’s what I wanted to do, but I also knew it would take some time.”

“I got a job with Border Express driving HR trucks around Adelaide and familiarising myself with the town. I thought that over the next few years I could progress to HC and then to MC work and finally, hopefully onto road trains.

“It was about nine months later when I saw a brochure from Allan Miller Transport Training. It said they were seeking MC drivers without any experience? It was the strangest advertisement that I’d ever seen. I took it home and put it on the fridge. I said to Hailee that there must be some sort of catch to it. No one advertises for MC drivers with no experience! Are they going to throw in a set of steak knives as well?”

“That ad was stuck to the fridge for maybe four months and I didn’t do anything about it. Then in May, 2018, Hailee went to the Adelaide Careers Expo with her job. Allan Miller had a stand there as well and she went and spoke to the sales manager, Adam Wilkinson.”

**Hailee gave Jeremy the push he needed**

“He told her to tell me to ring up and make an appointment. This was on a Friday. I went in on the Tuesday for an interview, they offered me a job on the Wednesday and I started two weeks later.”

“So here I am, an employee of Allan Miller Transport Training. The first week there I was with a mentor, driving a flatbed truck with a crane on it, doing work for Bianco. Then they moved me over to Symon’s & Clark Transport (these are companies that Allan Miller subs for).”

“I started driving side loader containers as an HC driver. It was maybe three weeks later when I finished early and I got back to the yard about 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I started washing my truck when Peter Simmons strolled up to me. This was the first time I had met him.

“He had heard of me though, and asked me a few questions including my ultimate goal to which I responded driving road trains to Perth. He just said, ‘I’ll talk to you soon’, and walked away.

“It was maybe another three or four weeks when Peter came up to me and said he had a position coming along subbing to HPS Transport and was I interested? Interested? This was the company that my five-year goal was supposed to lead me to.

“Peter took me into HPS and I had an interview with them. They talked about what the next 12 months would look like and how it would all work. A couple of weeks later I started working with them as a local driver, under the employ of Allan Miller. I was driving a Western Star semi on that job, doing mainly local work. In what little spare time I had I would hook up road trains and dollies in the yard – just practising and playing around with that equipment.”

“For the first month with HPS, I just stayed on the flat stuff. Then they sent me up that long hill on the freeway out of Adelaide heading towards Melbourne and back with an instructor. A few people have died at the bottom of that hill. Everything I did was a learning curve. Each month we did something else – load restraint, fatigue management, OHS, all sorts of things.”

“I started with HPS in the August and it was the following January when Peter Simmons and I started doing road train work. Initially we would run no more than about an hour and a half up the road to Lochiel. The driver taking a truck on to Perth would follow us in the Ute, we would change over at Lochiel and we would come back to Adelaide in the Ute.”

“The company is intent on taking you through step by step. You crawl before you walk before you run. After Lochiel we went further to Port Augusta on a number of trips. Then it was further still to the WA border. After that it was as far as Cocklebiddy.”

“In May last year HPS put me in with a full-time Perth driver who was an HPS employee. With him I finally got to run all the way to Perth. Shortly after my 12 months with Allan Miller was up and I transferred from Allan Miller’s employment to working for HPS full-time and that’s where I am now, a couple of years ahead of my five-year plan.”

“I’m absolutely positive this would never have happened if I did not come into contact with Peter Simmons and Allan Miller Transport Training. Getting into this sort of work is full of contradictions. You get a B double license but the operators want two years’ experience before they will hire you. You want to drive a road train but again, they want two years’ experience. Where are you supposed to gain it? You are a young bloke so who is going to ensure you?

“Allan Miller have a good association with NTI Insurance and the fact that I’d done the course with them gave me the tick of approval from NTI. They knew that Peter was going to stick with me in the cab until he deemed me proficient – and Peter sets very high standards.”

…………..

Jeremy is now Living the Dream, working for his company of choice, cruising the Nullarbor. It was just prior to our interview with him that he experienced a truckies worst nightmare – a blown steer tyre.

“I was cruising along at 100 km/h between the Nullarbor Roadhouse and the border, which is a 200 km stretch of nothing. It was about 2.30 in the morning when the tyre popped. I was fully loaded so had about 70 tons on board and the truck was shaking all over the place. I didn’t slam on the brakes but rather pulled it gently to a stop over about 2 km. I’d heard that blowing a steer tyre wasn’t a great experience, and they were right! I must admit I was a bit shaky after the event. I’m convinced that the depth of training that I had with Peter helped me in this situation.”

“Although an employee of HPS now, Peter keeps in touch with me. His interest goes beyond the end of the course and beyond the end of employment with him. He is genuinely interested in the people he has trained. His interest in my work driving, and as a person is ongoing.”

Here at Truckin with Kermie we can only hope that the work being done by Allan Miller Transport Training will become widespread throughout the country and the standard under which people learn the transport trade. Because, like plumbing or building, truck driving is a trade – and it is way past the time where it should be recognised as such by both state and federal governments.