After a full-time career spanning more than 66 years, Gene ‘George’ Daley of Paeroa finds it hard to relax. “I would rather still be driving, to get out and enjoy myself,” he says, a comment that tells you a lot about the man and his love of trucking.

Reflecting on an extensive career in trucking, 84-year-old George Daley is humble to a fault. Maybe it’s the three years spent in an Auckland orphanage between 10 and 13 years of age, or the character shaping life only vocations like trucking can deliver. Maybe it was always his nature. Whatever the reason, it makes for an easy yarn.

After his time in the orphanage he enrolled at St Joseph’s School in Auckland, as it was called then. The upside of that was being able to keep a keen eye on the new Auckland Harbour Bridge being built. What boy wouldn’t just love watching that!

Post-school and like many in the 1950s, George’s working life started in farming. At 15, he was popped on a train to Taumarunui, with 10 shillings in his pocket and a set of summer clothes, ready to work on a sheep and beef farm. “After about 15 months, I shifted to a farm near Stratford,” recalls George. “I was sharemilking 330 cows with two other fellas. I would pushbike about 14km into Stratford to play football … I had a flash racing bike in those days, with all the gears!”

Sharemilking took him to Ōpiki, near Palmerston North, for stock agents HM Seymour & Co. George soon became aware of the trouble the company was having finding trucks to take the pigs and cattle to the saleyards. “I got my licence when I was almost 17. I saved up to buy an A5 Bedford truck and built a wooden cattle crate for it. I would cart the stock to Levin on a Tuesday and Palmerston North on a Wednesday.” And that’s when George’s trucking career began.

“After a while, I sold my truck to Mr Mansell Seymour and I moved to stay with my aunty and uncle in Papatoetoe, Auckland. My uncle was Lyall Bonney [L.W. Bonney & Sons]. He gave me a seven-tonne petrol Commer to drive, followed by a Leyland 750. I was carting coal from Kōpuku to the Tepid Baths in Auckland, NZ Drycleaners in Karangahape Road, and to the breweries. As well as driving the truck, my job was to chauffeur my aunty (Mrs Bonney) all over the place in a big Chevrolet Bel Air.

“After a while, I left Bonneys. I had met a girl from Tokoroa, and I chased her! I got a job at NZ Forest Products, driving an International R190 carting logs. Soon after I moved on to Cambridge Transport, but still based in Tokoroa. I was driving a Thames Trader, carting general freight. We took bagged cement and steel pylons out to the new power projects. Actually, we went for a drive up there recently and it was totally different … it’s all tarseal now.

“We would often take timber from Kinleith to Napier and bring back paper. We did that trip in a day in the Thames Trader … that was a big day!

“In that Thames Trader, we had a hole in the bonnet where we could pull a lever, like a choke, to help us get up the hills. It wasn’t legal what we did, because we had a trailer on the back and the truck was only built to be just a truck.”

In 1959, aged just 19 and with plenty of experience, George decided Paeroa was the place to live and took a driving job with Brennan & Co. “My first truck there was a little Morris FGK60 freight truck, and then I shifted onto an International FF160 two-axle tip truck. We were tipping metal and we carted to the Tūrua straight project and the roads around Mangatarata.

The roads on the Hauraki Plains were all on swamp and peat land, so we would cut tea-tree (mānuka) and lay it in bundles in a crisscross pattern as a base. We then put rocks on top, covered with two-inch metal. This was followed by smaller and smaller metal and then rolled. There was no tarseal back then.”

Late in 1959, George frequented Paeroa’s Regent Theatre [cinema] and met sweet 15-year-old Carole, who worked weekends at the cinema. He impressed her with his immaculate Mark 1 Zephyr, complete with aerials and accessories, after earlier making her furious when he tripped her up in the cinema as a joke.

The Zephyr obviously worked, because in 1964, they married, had three great kids, Michelle, Sonya and Brandon, and still enjoy married life today.

While at Brennan’s, George moved on to a petrol FF170 International tractor unit towing a two-axle artic. “I would go up to Auckland with empty beer bottles for Dominion Breweries at Ōtāhuhu and Lion Breweries at Newmarket and bring back full ones. I would also take butter from Paeroa and Ngātea to the King’s Wharf. Back then, the motorway only went from Papatoetoe to Ōtāhuhu. About 12 months later, they extended it to Mt Wellington, and from there, it was extended in stages.”

In 1965, Brennan & Co combined with Sarjants Transport and became Provincial Transport. “I had various trucks and runs with the company, ending up with a Leyland AEC,” says George. The Leyland was a single drive, with a two-axle semi-trailer, towing a two-axle dog trailer forming an A-train – which was the first of its type in the area.”

By the early 1970s, young Brandon joined George for rides in the truck, kick-starting his interest in trucks and leading to his own trucking career. While chatting about that era, we asked George for any amusing anecdotes. He says loads of things happened, but he couldn’t think of anything specific. Brandon piped up with “There would have been a lot of drinking back then,” to which George replied, “Yeah, there was a lot of that!”

The Leyland was George’s last truck before taking on a fertiliser salesperson role at the Paeroa office of Provincial. “I travelled all over the country,” recalls George. “When others left their job, I would run the Auckland and Hamilton offices until they found a replacement. My company car was an HQ Holden. One year, it was parked at a Christmas function at Maramarua. A front-end loader was parked at the top of a hill, and it decided to take off by itself. It ran down the hill and picked up the Holden in its bucket. Luckily, it did little damage, and we were still able to drive it home!”

By the early 1980s, George had become a jack-of-all-trades with Provincial Transport. “While I was still a salesperson, I became manager of the Netherton bulk store and depot, as well as filling in at other depots when their managers were away. I was also dispatcher and even ended up painting trucks out in the workshop. There were about 80 trucks in the fleet, and I painted a good percentage of them.

“I also had a hand in the design and implementation of the mini fertiliser spreaders, for use under the kiwifruit vines around the area. We went as far as Waiuku, Tūākau, Whitianga and through the Bay of Plenty, selling fertiliser and promoting the use of the new spreaders.”

George clearly has a flair for creativity. “I had input in the design of the trailers that delivered the fertiliser to the mini spreaders. The rear of the trailer lifted, allowing the mini spreader to park underneath. A revolving conveyor belt ran through the centre of the trailer to move the product up and over into the spreader.”

After being a company driver for many years, George ventured into truck ownership again. In 1988 Provincial Transport offered owner-driver positions to their employees. “I ended up buying my own truck, an N12 Volvo with a 40ft tri-axle semi-trailer, purchased from the company. I ran that for a couple of years. I didn’t actually drive it; I had a driver (Jared Cameron) on it while I stayed managing at Netherton. With ‘G & CA Daley’ on the door, albeit small, we had a definite sense of pride.”

It was during these years that Provincial Transport became Provincial Heatons. George and Carole decided to upgrade to a new F12 Intercooler 420hp Volvo, this time with George behind the wheel. However, on the day of registration of the F12, Provincial Heatons went into receivership. George and Carole had a new truck sitting outside their house with no company to contract to.

“We went out and got our own contract,” says Carole. “Carting frozen export meat from Morrinsville to Taupiri, as well as export containers to Auckland and Tauranga ports,” George adds.

After only a year or two, G & CA Daley started to grow with the acquisition of a Mack Mid-Liner and a Mack Super Liner, continuing with the meat contract.

During this time, George and Carole branched out in another direction. Along with several others, they formed Morrinsville Transport. George’s expertise and knowledge within the industry helped build the company and lead to its success. While still driving the F12, George was helping run the company in the evenings or during the day, calling into the office from time to time.

“I was involved for a number of years,” says George, “and, boy, were those busy years! It was the late 1980s, and I had one of the first mobile phones. It was a brick … I’ve still got it somewhere.”

In his teenage years, Brandon was always around to help with the truck washing. The family begin recalling a couple of gems, and Carole takes the lead. “George and I had been away for a day out. On our return, we went down the back of the yard and something didn’t look quite right. We found out Brandon and his mate, Gene Peterson, had taken the truck down the back after washing it, but it was just a bog down there. They were both still school kids and neither had their driver licence. They had to go and get Gene’s father’s truck (Clarry Peterson) to pull them out.”

Brandon adds, “Yeah, we washed the N12 and decided to drive it round and round the yard … but ended up stuck!”

By the early 1990s, Brandon progressed to a newly qualified truck driver. He drove alongside his dad, starting on one of two recently acquired Isuzus. “I always expected Brandon to follow in my footsteps in the industry,” George comments. “When I could, I would take young Brandon for rides in the truck in the hope he would want to be a driver.”

“In those days it was a natural progression,” says Carole.

There is no doubt there was plenty of hijinks in Brandon’s younger days. He laughs and recalls another gem, “Usually on a guys’ wedding day, they go with their mates and play golf or something before getting ready. Well, instead, me and my mate hooked up four trailers and we went road-training around town. Instead of the usual, we went trucking! Haha!”

On the theme of character building, back in the day there were few trucking entities that could match R & L Main in equipping young blokes with a resilient disposition, you might say. Based in the industrial hamlet of Kōpū near Thames, Brandon did a short stint in the boutique linehaul outfit before returning home to form the Daley Partnership with George and Carole.

Over the next couple of decades, the tally of trucks on the road grew to six tractor units and 13 trailers, including a swinglift, which Carole says transformed the business and opened up a lot of new opportunities.

“Containers were becoming more of a thing, delivering to private homes and everything. George has been everywhere and in all sorts of bother, all over the Coromandel putting shipping containers in impossible places.”

Brandon says, “No container ever came back unable to be delivered. Dad got every container put in place wherever the customer wanted it.”

“It was a great thing, the old swinglift. We used to get in a bit of trouble with it at times,” George says, kicking off a charming family exchange.

“The first swinglift we had, somebody took out the power pole at the Kerepehi Coolstore one night,” said Brandon, indicating toward George.

“What? Someone took out the power pole. Who? You took out the power pole?” says Carole.

“You wouldn’t have known about that!” Brandon says to his mum, who naturally asks, “So, what happened?”

George and Brandon chime together, “nothing!” “Who paid for it?” Carole asks, and George replies with a chuckle, “We didn’t!”

Daley Partnership had solid work with a Waitoa freezing works contract for 20-odd years. “That was our mainstay,” says Brandon. “We had a couple of great drivers who were with us for years … Stan Pearce and Kenny Hirawani. They were almost like family.”

By about 2020, after more than 20 years of Daley Partnership, George was still driving full time. “Dad was turning 80,” says Brandon. “so I said to him, ‘I’m finishing’, hoping that he would finish, too. It wasn’t because of any mishaps or anything like that – I just didn’t want to be the person responsible for him carrying on driving because he was saying to everyone, ‘I’m only here because the young fella is here.’ I wanted to take the guilt off myself by saying, ‘You’re 80, you should be enjoying your time now.’

“He was using me as an excuse, though, he really wanted to still be driving and said he would come off the road when he was ready. I carried on with my decision and left the partnership to get experience in a different area of the industry. However, Dad decided to keep driving for a couple more years until ill health stopped him in 2022.”

Carole says there were very few days that George was happier than the days that he and Brandon were driving together, one following the other. “The extension from that is the day George and Brandon were coming home from the Tauranga port together. Brandon’s son Jacob was travelling with ‘Pop’ (George). There’s a photo of Jacob looking out the window, laughing, because the CH was passing the Kenworth!

“Our whole family, including our daughters, have always supported ‘the dream’. It was always George’s dream, then it became Brandon’s and now it’s Jacob’s dream. The girls knew that’s how life was, you didn’t go off having big holidays or doing anything much. Our family life revolved around trucking.”

George and Brandon are proud that Jacob has followed them into the industry. “I used to take Jacob in his baby capsule on the forklift or in the truck. I used a two-and-a-half tonne load strap to strap the capsule to the seat! There were no seatbelts back then. Jacob loved riding in the truck, and at times he would come with me, and I would homeschool him in the truck,” recalls Brandon.

Currently based in Brisbane, Jacob has been a truck driver for about a year. He’s the round-town guy, driving a class 2 truck, doing pick-ups and deliveries for the roadtrains heading to Darwin.

George says, “I would have loved to have travelled in convoy with both Brandon and Jacob, if it had been possible … but I ended up too old.”

Trucking has always been No.1 for George. However, community service has been important in his life, too, with time spent in Rotary and Lions clubs, and for many decades he was heavily involved with the Paeroa RSA. During this time, he has served as president and is currently vice-president, as well as a life member.

Close-knit, dedicated and hardworking describes Gene ‘George’ Daley, Brandon Gene Daley and Jacob Gene Daley – a family with trucking blood spanning the ‘gene’rations.