Vale John McCarroll

In-depth

11 Nov

John McCarroll passed away last Saturday, November 7 after a 12 month battle with cancer. Well known in the Shepparton, Vic region, John started out as a Diesel mechanic who ended his career as Branch Manager for Hartwigs in Shepparton. From there he received an offer too good to refuse from Daimler Trucks.

In mid-October last year, I interviewed John about his ‘retirement’. He was loving life and being on the road. It was only a couple of short weeks later that he was diagnosed with cancer.

Stalwart to the end, John managed a massive grin when the local industry put on a convoy past his home recently. It was a fitting tribute to a bloke admired and loved by all who knew him.

I was fortunate to have spent a number of occasions in Johnno’s company when test driving Daimler product, loving his dry sense of humour and his patience with someone unfamiliar with the products in question. John was a good educator along with his other many great traits.

Following, is the story I wrote on John McCarroll last year.

May you be at peace Johnno…..

2. Other truckies look twice when they see where I'm sat..JPG

Every morning, Monday to Friday, John McCarroll turns up to the yard of Kreskas Bros. Transport and climbs up into his daily drive. He then proceeds to do a 750 km trip and returns to the yard. On Saturdays he’s back there cleaning the truck for the coming week. This is what John calls ‘semi’ retirement. His Drive is not one of Kreskas’ trucks. The company just kindly allows John to park up in their yard.

I’m sitting beside John in what is going to be a new beast on the Australian roads next year, being the Freightliner Cascadia.

John is not a truckie by trade but rather a diesel mechanic, who’s working life has mostly revolved around the Freightliner brand.

He started his apprenticeship ‘way back when’ at Mid Star Motors, the Mercedes-Benz dealership in Shepparton. From there he moved on to run the workshop for a large transport company in the area, looking after some 36 vehicles – a big fleet fort the time.

“I went back to Mid Star Motors when they became the Mack dealership. Then came Jones Truck Repairs - the local Freightliner dealer - where I went on to become foreman, service manager and sales manager. That business was taken over by Hartwig’s Trucks in 2002. I followed and became branch manager for Shepparton and a shareholder in the Hartwig group.”

In 2015 John turned 60 and sat back to contemplate the future with his wife. “The Doc said do you want to be here for long time? If you keep doing what you do, you probably won’t be. It was high blood pressure and general 60-year-old problems. Stress is a big thing. It’s not only your job that you’re responsible for. It’s all the people that work for you and their families. They have mortgages too.”

So he walked away. Too young to sit around, he did a bit of farm work, driving tractors and headers, helped erect sheds and played with a demolition company, “Wrecking houses and stuff. There was a good deal of satisfaction in that,” he laughed.

Then from out of the blue came a call from Freightliner. The brand had entered Australia in 1987 and John had worked on their product from 1988 right up until 2015. This had not gone unnoticed by the company. They asked John if he’d like to hop into a test-bed Cascadia, run it around and, using his fount of knowledge, give feedback on the truck. John jumped at the opportunity.

1. John loves his daily drive and is proud of his input into delivering a better truck to the industry..JPG

Along with Leon Beard, the men test-drive a 13L (single) and 16L (B-double) on a daily basis around a 750km route. “Head office can change various configurations of the trucks via computer and I report back on it. There can be distinct differences, depending what parameters are put into the truck - some good some and bad. That’s the whole point of the exercise – to delete the bad. What we’re doing is refining the truck down to be the best it can be so the truck can be tailored to an operator’s particular needs. I can say that Freightliner are not shirking in their duty to produce the best possible truck for the Australian market. They have been absolutely awesome and I’ve had no dramas at all.”

It’s a credit to John that Freightliner thought enough of him to put a brand-new product in his hands and tell him to go and play with it. In turn he is “Over the moon!”

The two men swap backwards and forwards between the trucks. “We’ll drive one for a couple of weeks and then jump out and into the other. Depending what the boffins have put into the computer you can really notice the changes, which can sometimes be startling.

3. Johno's retirement workplace suits him down to the ground - even if it on the wrong side of the cab..jpg

“What we’re doing here is cutting edge in some respects. I don’t think that they’ve even tried some of it in the United States, given they don’t run B-double applications over there. It’s all about making a better product.

“Being involved in the mechanical side of things, I understand the vehicles and I can report back, using the knowledge gained over the years as to what does and doesn’t work. That mechanical knowledge is probably paramount in this role.”

John calls this semi-retired?

“It’s better than having 40 staff and running a business. They obviously have the trust in me to do it. I don’t have to hop in it at 3 o’clock in the afternoon to head off somewhere overnight, and I don’t have to be anywhere at a certain time to unload. I just check it every now and then to make sure the chains are nice and tight and that the concrete in the trailers hasn’t moved. A lot of guys have said tanker jobs are pretty good but this is the best job of all.”

A story in The Good Oil, which was a newsletter of the Mercedes-Benz/Freightliner heavy truck organisation back in the winter of 1998, printed this story about John:

“The Longest Service Call in Mercedes-Benz History.”

In 1973, Mike Dobson, then owner of Mid Star and now National manager of SelecTrucks, had sold a LS 1418 to a Shepparton local named Rocky Cricelli. Rocky was doing a Perth trip and broke down in Ceduna – in fact he cooked the engine and wanted to Mid Star to fit a reconditioned engine. So off went John McCarroll, then a third-year apprentice, in the Toyota Dyna service vehicle with the new reconditioned engine strapped onto the tray. It was 1,450 km to Ceduna, and John was travelling at 60 km an hour and managed to get a couple of hours sleep around Port Augusta.

On arrival, John found the 1418 in a hay shed and proceeded to change over the engines, which amounted to 2 days of non-stop work. After the changeover, Rocky headed for Perth and John started the 25 hour return trip to Shepparton. On the way, John was stopped by police in Echuca (just an hour from home) at 4 AM for ‘just a routine check’. It was subsequently found that the Toyota was not registered – Mike Dobson had the company operating ‘real cheap.’

So for all the budding service manager of the year contenders, that effort is typical of the service John McCarroll has given for Mercedes-Benz/Freightliner owners over a 25 year period, and it has helped him achieve one ‘Service Manager of the Year’, and two ‘Runner-up Service Manager of the Year awards’.

...Rest in Peace…

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