AFTER almost 50 years driving semi-trailers, B-doubles and road trains, Norm Ekman knows pretty much all there is to know about steering big rigs through the outback.
Yet the 70-year-old is by no means ready to give it all away, perhaps one of the reasons he has been honoured by induction into the National Road Transport Hall of Fame in Alice Springs.
The Senior spoke to the father of five as he and his wife Annette were pulling out of Camooweal en route to the August 30 event.
A resident of Moonbi in the New England region, Norm has worked full-time with Parry Logistics in nearby Tamworth for the past five years, mostly covering the Sydney and Brisbane routes.
His boss, Greg Parry, nominated Norm, describing him as a “trucking icon known and respected by many people in the transport industry”.
Initially based in Mudgee, Norm started out as an interstate trucker in 1968, driving an old Leyland filled with sheep skins. Other trucks included early-model Volvos and Macs.
Unlike veterans in many other industries, he’s grateful for change. The way he puts it, measured against those of the past, today’s trucks are like heaven on wheels.
‘There’s no comparison,” Norm said. “They were pretty rugged trucks in those days – there was no air con, no heating. You’d cook in the summer and freeze in the winter.
“To sleep, you’d carry your swag with you and put it under the trailer.”
For all modern motorists’ complaints about roads, conditions were far more challenging when Norm started out.
“There were still a lot of gravel roads and narrow bridges,” he said. “Just from Mudgee it used to take 20 hours to Brisbane, 22 to Melbourne and 10 to Sydney.
“From Mudgee now, I’d estimate you could get to Brisbane in about nine hours.
“Not only that, today we can do it grossing 60 tonnes or more. Back then we’d gross 21, 22 tonnes.”
Nor is trucking the hard yakka it was.
“It’s nearly all palletised today,” Norm said. “It’s fork on, fork off nowadays. Before it was lump on, lump off.
“I’d have had to retire a long time ago if it was as hard as it used to be.”
He does miss some things.
“I used to like the camaraderie. After 45 or 46 years, you get to know a few people in the industry. But everything’s express nowadays. No one has time to socialise any more.”
None of his offspring are following in his tyre marks.
“My youngest fella drove trucks for a few years but got out to go mining. I don’t blame him. You’ve got to either like it or you don’t.
“I hope I can hang in there for another four years. What’s a man going to do if he doesn’t work?”
