Rewind 2011: Jack Long - Trucks, Trees & Dirt

In-depth

21 June

Prologue: In 2011, at the urging of Sean Denny I interviewed one Jack Long. I had not met Jack before and had no idea that such a colourful character existed in my home town. Jack is proof that ‘education’ comes in all forms – and many of them are outside the classroom.

Jack has passed from this life, but his story deserves to live on – both as a part of trucking history and a life well lived, but also as a lesson that endeavour and will can lead to success.

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**Jack Long's face reflects thousands of hours of back breaking work and as many stories of a full and varied life.**

Jack Long was born in Toorak in 1931 - a long way from trucks, logging and the bush - but at a young age moved to the bush at Buxton (V).

Jack’s formal education only lasted six months. Not that he had spent much of that time in the classroom. “I knew nothing - I wasn’t very clever. I was mostly in the bush with the sawmill workers and every time a log truck came along I’d stick my thumb out for a lift – anything to avoid going to school.”

**Young Jack (L) and workmate back in ‘The Good Old Days’**

With all his young life in, and around the logging and sawmilling industry, it was only natural that that was where Jack's working life would head.

At 16 he was driving the company Jeep as well as bulldozers at the saw mill. He was also carting electric light poles from East Gippsland to Brooklyn. One day at Bairnsdale he stopped to get a pie and the local copper walked across the road.

“He came up to me and said, ‘You got a licence to drive that truck?’ I didn’t know what he was talking about – I didn’t know about licences. He said ‘You got five bob on you?’ So I gave him five bob and that’s how I got my licence."

Jack had his own truck at 21 – an ex-army Mack, circa 1942. A big load in those days was 10-12 ton and Jack would haul from Cock’s mill at Marysville down over the Old Spur Road.

“I only lost a truck once. Coming around a corner on a logging track there was a couple parked smack bang in the middle of the track. Avoiding them took me over the side. I rolled the rig and jinker three times - with the load still intact - and ended the right way up.”

When he climbed back up to the road the couple had gone. “So I walked back up the bush, got the machine, dragged the truck out and continued on to deliver the load.”

At the time he was working on his own, felling trees and selling them to sawmills. In the winter months Pine trees were his staple source of income as he couldn’t get into the bush for the hardwood.

**They don’t take trees down like this anymore**

One day, driving past the, then proposed Chirnside Estate, northeast of Melbourne, he saw they were felling pines along the side of the road. Ever the opportunist, Jack went over to the bloke asked what he intended doing with the felled timber. He saw Jack’s truck loaded with logs and replied, “You take ‘em down and you can have ‘em.”

“It was money for jam.”

When Jack had removed all the trees the contractors asked him to work for them as a contractor. As a consequence he moved into the earthmoving business. “I had 10-12 tippers, a dozen loaders and dozers and two low loaders. I’d drive the low loader all night, delivering machinery to the various sites.”

Some twenty years later Jack was driving past a site where Shell was building a massive servo with 12 underground tanks. He went in and asked if they needed trucks to cart the dirt away. With opportunity knocking he took it to the fledgling Montana timber company. Montana had put up a small building on the edge of a quarry. “It was goat territory,” said Jack. “I ended up being paid twice – once for removing the earth for Shell and again by Montana to dump it at their premises.”

Montana asked Jack to contract for them, and wanting to get out of the earthmoving business he sold all his machinery and moved back into timber.

This relationship lasted another 20 years until Jack’s retirement. Along the way, the wily bloke bought himself a couple of sawmills and supplied Montana with dressed timber.

**An incredible photo of Jack’s sawmill at Kinglake, which he lost in the Black Saturday bushfire, 2009**

He saw opportunity in the scrub timber, with sizes he couldn’t sell. He turned them into wood cabins and sold them off for $25,000 each. “A woman down in Gippsland wanted one in a hurry. So we pulled out all the stops and got it there double quick. When we arrived she was so happy that she gave me a great big hug and a kiss on the cheek. We went round the back to unload and found that the entire back wall was gone!"

In 1966 Jack was selling a machine and the buyer was $5k short. He asked if Jack would take a boat to make up the difference. It happened to be a ski-boat and he was instantly hooked. Joining the Melbourne Speedboat Club, the first event he entered resulted in last place. This wasn’t good enough, and so taken with the sport was Jack, that he spent $160,000 on a Repco-Brabham Hydroplane.

**Jack had many racing boats – all called Scrubcat. This is an early one**

He tells of a boat cutting across him and the Hydroplane slicing it in half. “It was the other bloke's fault, but I was so relieved to see him alive that I bought him a new boat.

Jack raced over a period of thirty years and seldom failed to get a place. He still holds 11 water speed records.

**…. And the last. This pay cheque illustrates a pretty successful career for a bloke who could, ‘only chop firewood’**

The walls of Jack’s house are a pictorial history of a life in the bush, trucks and boat racing. At 80, he does his fair share of ‘sitting and looking’ these days. But talk of the bush, trucks and boats - and his eyes fire up.

"Luck? You make your own luck,” says Jack. “Usually through bloody hard work. You look for opportunity and make the most of it and that’s what I’ve done.”

"People? I’ve found again and again – particularly out in the bush – that the so-called drunks and no-hopers were some of the best workers. You take everyone as you find them.”

"Trucks? I had another truck brand but we never made any money out of trucks until we got Macks - well, we’d make it, but with Macks we’d keep it!"

Mack trucks, Caterpillar machinery, Holden utes and Stihl or Husqvana chainsaws. These are Jack Long’s secrets to success.