Jack Benseman, widely known as 'Gentleman Jack' has driven trucks, mainly stock cartage for over 28 years. Three months ago he left TNL. With everything being done at night these days or getting to places in the dark, he said, "it's no fun fighting bulls in the dark." He also celebrated his 61st birthday last week.
As we sat quietly talking in the front of the Landcruiser outside the A&P showground in Richmond, his eyes kept constantly acknowledging the heavy trucks as they rolled past us, while we talked of change.
When Jack started he had 150 horsepower trucks with two decks for sheep or one for cattle, his third truck was a 260hp Leyland, and then he went on to three deck trucks he described as much harder to load. "We used to cart 630 lambs on three decks down to Kaiapoi, and now they cart 640-650 on four decks, but they only cart just as many really with weights, I hate to think what the weights were when we carted them," he laughs.
When carting lambs to Kaiapoi, they were marked the day before putting on the truck, so the lambs were empty and travelled much better. Jack said that if you jammed them in too tight, then of course you get dead lambs, but there are still fatalities now, and they are carting on four decks close to what they carted on three.
"Farmers need to get their stock in early - they must be emptied out, they travel better, they don't get bruised the same and if they are going to market or saleyards they don't get as dirty, all farmers should do that. Some farmers have it in their heads that they've got to be full for more weight. A lot of times in the last few years you help the farmers get them in, so you can imagine what they are like."
Adding to this, there are not enough effluent disposal tanks on the side of the road. "You can't have big tanks on your truck and go all day without emptying them out, especially if you have picked up the lambs off the paddock, you can't help but overflow your tanks."
Nowadays trucks are in the 450-600hp range, and while he feels young drivers should be able to get their licenses a lot quicker than it presently is, they shouldn't be able to drive the big high horsepower machines for at least 2-3 years. "They are just too fast for them now. They think they know it all - but they don't. It takes a wee bit of experience and a wee bit of movement I reakon, before they should get in the big horsepower trucks. Its amazing how much slower a truck seems, you don't seem to be going as fast, and I think that's where a lot of people get caught up - I'm sure of it."
In over 28 years, Jack has been caught driving over his hour limit only once. Log books have only been in force the last 10-12 years, and it was early on when he was pulled over having driven from Blenhiem to Kaiapoi, back to Blenhiem, and was approaching Addington in the early hours of the following morning. The Judge asked where he had stayed afterwards, "Oh I'd come back home again - so I'd almost doubled the hours."
Jack travelled 1.7 million miles in his ERF truck, and with an old Leyland and a Volvo, drove more than 400,000 miles over four years, so he has seen a lot of silly and ridiculous things on the road. But the funniest things that happened, have always been with mates on the job. "Peter Sweeney was a classic, and a great joker to work with. We had a job up north and we couldn't get a ferry back, so we stopped early, unloading at the Levin saleyards and got into the pub at 5 in the afternoon. He was a hard doer; we skipped dinner having a double-headed whiskey before getting to bed at 1 o'clock. I woke in the night hearing a scuffle and looked up to see him with a bed lamp in both hands shaking hell out of it, he was gonna kill it right or wrong. Dreaming he was fighting a cow I suppose."
I asked Jack and wife Pam what they were going to do now with all the spare time. "I haven't got any," he said laughing out loud again, "I've got grandkids!"
