Shears

22 — September 2010 OWNER//DRIVER www.ownerdriver.com.au

shearing sheep and driving trucks for

Reg Wilmott and others. And in 1968
he bought his first truck, an Acco
International, which he used to cart
wheels from Adelaide to Melbourne.
He returned to Adelaide loaded with
Ford cars.

&gears
Interstate truckie, Jim Loechel, celebrates his 72nd birthday on
September 10. He talks to Tamara Whitsed about his 57 years
on the road
The Wodonga-Brisbane run is
a demanding job for any driver, but Jim
Loechel feels at home on the Newell
Highway and, at 72, is still happy
sleeping in a Greenfreight Kenworth
five nights a week.
Jim, who has driven for Greenfreight
for 22 years, carts general goods
and groceries. He usually leaves his
Wodonga home on Saturday night,
returning from Brisbane on Thursday
night.
He loves his job, appreciates working
for a “solid company”, and plans to
drive for another year before he retires.
“It’s a way of life for me, I’ve been
doing it that long,” he says.
Jim grew up on a farm near Bowhill,
South Australia, and fell in love with
the KB6 International that Collin
Krollig used to cart wood from the
Loechel’s farm to Hahndorf and
Adelaide. In 1953 Jim was only 15,
but that didn’t stop Collin employing
him to drive the KB6. Back then
Jim drove the truck onto a punt
at Mannum to cross the Murray
River.
“I was in the truck down in Adelaide
the day I turned 16, and I went into
the Registry of Motor Vehicles with
a pound note and I walked out with
a licence,” Jim says. There was no
practical test. Jim just answered a few
easy questions.
The work with Collin Krollig was
seasonal, so Jim also drove for Rupert
Webber during the grape season. And
when there was no freight he sheared
sheep. Shearing 100 sheep a day was
hard work, but he was paid four times
more than he could earn driving a
truck.
Jim moved to Maitland, South
Australia, in 1962 and continued
POWER STRIKE
There was initially plenty of work for
the Acco. In 1968 Jim moved to Murray
Bridge and subcontracted for Vaughn
Transport and Transline Freighters. But
work slowed down because of a power
strike which brought factories to a
halt.
Luckily a friend helped him find
work carting scrap metal for Lane’s
Interstate. This job required Jim
to move his family to Moyhu near
Wangaratta, Victoria.
Logging was more family-friendly
than interstate work, so Jim bought
a C Line International and used it to
cart logs from Whitfield to a mill at
Wangaratta. He was home with his
young sons most nights.
There were no logs to cart during
the winter so Jim found other work
including stumping houses, cutting
firewood and helping at a local sawmill.
“I’d do whatever was around. Then
some work would come up and you’d
have to go with the truck,” he says.
He added an Acco 2150 to the
fleet, and when a Wangaratta transport
company closed down Jim took
over their Melbourne-Wangaratta
work and formed Wangaratta Freight
Lines.
Continued on page 24

“I went into the Registry of Motor

Vehicles with a pound note and I
walked out with a licence.”
24 — September 2010
Jim’s ACCO 2150 carting
silos
Rudy Vanderwal (left) is
Greenfreight’s longest
serving employee and
Jim Loechel is their
oldest employee
Jim borrowed money to buy two
more trucks, giving him a total of
four. He says finance was not hard to
get “but it was too expensive — that’s
when we had that recession that Mr
Paul Keating said we had to have”.
“Six of our clients went bankrupt in a
matter of six months and they all owed
us substantial amounts of money,” he
says.
Through hard work, Jim avoided
bankruptcy but he closed the business:
“We just packed up. We never went
broke. We got out of it but only by the
skin of our teeth”.
He was driving for John Miller of
Wangaratta a few months later when
John sold his business to Greenfreight.
That’s how Jim’s career with
Greenfreight began 22 years ago on
September 4. “It was the first permanent
job I ever had. And it was good. And it
still is good,” he says.
Fred Green from Greenfreight met
his new employees at a barbecue and
OWNER//DRIVER
Jim’s C Line International
gave a speech. “He said then it was
getting to the stage where you either
had to have a lot of trucks or none at
all,” Jim recalls.
When Jim started at Greenfreight
he drove an S Line International.
Since then he has driven numerous
Kenworths and Volvos, and a
Louisville. His favourite truck has been
the 2002 Volvo Globetrotter. But he
also likes the Kenworth 108 he drives
today.
BEEN EVERYWHERE
Jim has driven Greenfreight trucks
across Australia — Perth, Cairns,
Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne. He
embraces change — new freight, new
roads, new trucks — and obtained his
B-double licence when he was almost
60.
Not surprisingly, Jim is the oldest
driver employed at Greenfreight. But
he is not the company’s longest serving
employee. His friend Rudy Vanderwal
(Back from left) Jim (in red) with trucking mates, John Smith, Allan
Grunow, Peter Groth and Russell Wallace
has worked for the Green family for
40 years.
Jim’s driving record and work
ethic are impressive, and prompted
Greenfreight to nominate him for
NatRoad’s Professional Driver of the
Year competition in 2002. He was a
worthy finalist.
After 57 years on the road, Jim
still loves driving interstate: “I’ve
always liked truck driving and moving
around. If a bloke was married
I wouldn’t be doing this anymore.
But I’m on my own and I just keep
doing it.”
The highways and trucks have
improved enormously since 1953,
but in some ways the industry has
declined. “There’s too many laws, too
many rules and regulations. It’s just
www.ownerdriver.com.au
Wangaratta Freight Lines’ Ford
Jim at home with the
Holden he is restoring
overloaded with them. You’ve got too
many things they can get you for,” he
says. He points to his work diary: “That
book’s full of little tricks like that”.
Jim expects to see more of his
family when he retires next year.
One of his seven sons drives a truck.
Another is a diesel mechanic. Jim
has 15 grandchildren and 6 great-
grandchildren. “I was going to do a
trip around Australia but I’ve done
that much driving around I don’t know
whether it will happen or not. I’ve been
a lot of places but there’s still a lot I
haven’t been,” he says.
Retirement will also give Jim time
to finish restoring his FJ Holden. They
were a common sight on the roads back
in the 1950s when Jim was a trucking
teenager. n