You know that calming relaxed feeling you get as you hit top box, stretched out in your air-ride, fully cushioned seat, with the open highway in front of you? You can feel the purr of the engine gently vibrating beneath your feet, the chilled sensation of the aircon blasting through the vents as you watch the heat haze outside sizzling like a Bunnings barbeque. Your hand reaches for the state-of-the-art entertainment system and, with the push of a button, all your troubles are drowned out by a kick-ass song blasting from the multitude of speakers in your well insulated cabin of comfort. It brings a feeling of inner peace, a sense of fulfilment and bliss. For some people.
Not Aaron Vesey. As far as Aaron is concerned, you can shelve that wide open highway with a quiet contained comfy cubicle. His bliss is found with a twin stick Mack, an AM radio and the comfort level of a beer crate on a wooden wheeled horse carriage. Okay, there may be a little poetic license there, but the truth is Aaron Vesey, along with his lovely wife Krystal, are the owners and operators of AKV Haulage and the stunning R-model you see before you. Aaron really does find his happy place behind the wheel of a truck with two more years spent on this planet than himself. This affection for antiques comes from time spent learning the transport trade under the tutelage of his dad and inspiration, Barry Vesey.
If you are from the Wollongong area, the name Barry Vesey may be familiar, or maybe you knew him by his ‘62’. Aaron’s dad was very well known in the area.
“Dad had Vesey Haulage; he did a whole heap around here. He was driving for a local company when I was really young and then went out on his own carting coal,” Aaron says.
“Back in the day on South Bulli, they just had fleet numbers and dad was number 62. Everyone knows him as 62 and that just stuck. A few years ago I was running Colac and I called out something on the radio and an old fella piped up asking who I was, I said ‘I’m Aaron’ and he said, ‘man, you sound like 62’. I told him that’s my dad and he couldn’t believe it.”
Aaron, like many others around Australia, grew up around trucks. Barry had trucks way back when Aaron was a baby, meaning early memories were filled with vehicles.
“I remember when I was really young, I’d go down to the yard with dad on the weekends when the boys were washing trucks,” he says. “They’d put me up in the bin of the single tipper and I’d be playing in the hoist well with my matchbox toys.
“They’d hose it inside every half hour or so just to keep it cool. I’d spend all day in there while they washed trucks.”
It is these fond memories that would eventually lead Aaron and his wife Krystal to venture out and follow the path of his father with AKV Haulage – Aaron Krystal Vesey Haulage. While we shall get to that story soon, we also need to open the Pandora’s box that has led to Aaron’s addiction to the stunning old-school workhorse you see before you.
“Dad had a few trucks, but my favourite was his Valueliner, I loved that thing,” he says.
“I remember when he had the Valueliner on the coal doing night shift. He’d say to me ‘just stay home and sleep in bed’ and I was always like ‘nah, I’m coming’. I still tell my wife now, the best sleep I ever had was sleeping in that Valueliner while it was going through the night.”
It was the kind of trucking childhood that many of us grew up with, and it formed pillars of patriotism that never break. Sadly, when Aaron was only 13, his dad took his own life.
“It was really tough, my younger brother had drowned when he was two and dad never really got over that. He was away for work and it really rocked him,” Aaron says.
“It was really hard, when I first got told, they never said how he passed. I just assumed it was a truck accident. It wasn’t talked about much back then.
“I just knew dad was so well loved down here. You talk to all the old fellas and they all say what a great bloke he was and how much they loved working with him. He was one of the original founders of the Camp Quality Illawarra Convoy. It was a long time ago, but it still hits me really hard.”
It was a very tough time for Aaron and the family. Aaron saw his schooling through, but as soon as he was old enough, he headed down the same driving path his father had blazed.
“As soon as I had my Ps and was old enough, I was straight into it. The first truck I ever drove was at Colmac Earthworks,” he says.
“It was an old twin stick White with a water cart. You used to have to time your twin stick changes with the motion of the water. You’d hold the steering wheel with your leg and use both arms to shift the sticks when the water peaked!”
From earthmoving, Aaron would follow in his dad’s footsteps and spend nearly a decade working coal as both a shift supervisor and driver.
“I remember the first truck I had on the coal was an old 404, it used to crack! I got sent home a couple of times for being too quick on the turnaround,” he says with a laugh.
Following nearly a decade on the coal, Aaron expanded his skills by levelling up to some truck and dog work, this time carting all manner of civil product into sites around Wollongong and as far as Sydney. He mastered the art of putting the truck and dog combos into some pretty tight places.
While Aaron was expanding his truck driving repertoire, he was also trying his hand at a few other professions as well.
“Sometimes I’d get a bit sick of it and go try something different – I was actually welding when I met Krystal, then went back to trucking,” he says.
“I was on the tools for a while, then back to trucking. I even worked as a cook for a bit, but then ended up back in trucking. I just love it and always end up back trucking.”
Sometimes his trucking breaks were by choice, other times they were a little more enforced. An example was when Aaron realised he wasn’t destined to be a motorcycle stunt rider.
“I came off the Harley and ended up in a hip-to-ankle cast for 10 months – I wasn’t able to drive for a year so that wasn’t fun,” he says.
In 2021, the Vesey family first started floating the idea of starting their own business.
“At the time I was working for a mate feeding the Cement Australia plant seven days a week. I was go-go-go – big days, huge hours,” he says.
“We’d just taken a five-week holiday, the biggest holiday I’d ever had, and when we got back, I said to Krystal I can’t go back to working that hard.”
With two young kids at home, Aaron was missing so much with his hectic work ethic.
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“I’d be away early in the morning and home in the arvo, but being old school, I had to wash the truck, get all the dust and dirt off and prep it for the next day, which would take a couple of hours, and I was knackered by the time I finished,” he says.
“I’d be asleep on the couch before dinner.”
It is worth recognising Krystal here. Aaron is the first to heap praise on his wife, not just for putting up with the ridiculous workload he maintained, but also for the unwavering support when he floated the idea of starting AKV Haulage.
“Massive credit to Krystal, because there’s not many women who would put up with the hours I was doing,” he says. “Then when we made the decision to buy the bogie, it was a huge sacrifice. We sold the caravan, sold her car, we were on the bones and she just supported and pushed me.”
Keep in mind, Krystal is not from trucking lineage – in fact Aaron testifies she was terrified of trucks until she met him. When the couple were discussing the idea of starting a business, it was Krystal backing her hubby and family that led to the position they are in now. The idea behind starting the company was to give their kids the life they didn’t have growing up.
“It was also for Aaron to be able to be there for things in their life, rather than always working and always for someone else,” Krystal says.
When I asked her how she approached the risks involved, her response was almost straight out of a motivational poster.
“If it didn’t work, it didn’t work, at least we knew we gave it a go and tried,” she says, though she quickly pointed out that she knew what Aaron was like and she knew it was going to work, although maybe not as rapidly as it did.
Once the decision had been made, the next task was getting a truck. Aaron had already locked in the fact he was just going to be chasing a single bogie tipper.
“I’d crunched all the numbers and with all the people I knew, plus people that knew the family name, I could make a go of it and just do it with a bogie tipper,” he says.
“I had a couple of mates steer me towards a guy selling a 2003 Mack Vision that he’d just done up and I went and saw it, bought it and we were away.” Aaron’s work ethic, along with his enthusiasm, meant AKV picked up work quickly and soon found itself doubling in size within the first six months. It’s a fancy way of saying he bought a second truck.
“I ended up getting one of the first 10-wheeler Metro-Liners in Wollongong, we were really busy and it was exactly what we needed,” Aaron says.
“Things were rocking along – we got the 10-wheeler, hired a full-time driver and then along came the floods and COVID.”
It was a real struggle for the new company for a while, but as Aaron and Krystal admit, if they could get through this, then they could get through anything – that’s just what they did. Once the flood effects subsided, and the COVID closures disappeared, AKV got back on track.
The Metro-Liner was sent packing and replaced with an extremely well looked after 2004 Western Star, packed with a big boy C-15.
“The customers we were getting were keen on truck and dog combos, so we opted to sell the 10-wheeler and get our first combo set. It is still flat out to this day,” he says.
That has us up to date with how AKV started and where it is sitting now. What we need to focus on now is what was happening in the background while Aaron was moving dirt around the Wollongong estates.
“Even as I was working the trucks, all I ever really wanted was to find dad’s Valueliner and bring it home,” Aaron says.
“My best memories always go back to riding and sleeping in that truck. I always wanted to find it and buy it back. It’s that emotional connection to my dad.”
This underlying motive meant that when Aaron wasn’t working, cleaning or doing the family thing, he was not far from Marketplace and online truck sales.
“The idea has been there for years – even back when I was on the coal you’d get to talking to the old timers that knew dad and the truck and someone would have a story about it. I’d be trying to patch it all together to work out where it ended up,” he says.
Throughout the years of his research, and even with the assistance of the Mack Man himself in Gary Richards, it has been an unsuccessful hunt so far. Aaron filled me in on what they had learnt throughout the process.
“It got sold and went to Botany, Sydney and was carting boxes. They painted it red and it was carting for Owens,” Aaron says.
“Then, apparently, he sold it to his mate in South Australia on a sheep farm. From there, it’s disappeared. I have contacted Mack, checked VIN numbers and seen if anyone had ordered parts. I put posts up on all the social media sites and tried everything. It’s a very unusual truck, because to have that bunk on it was different. That’s how you’d know it, from that bunk.”
Unfortunately, everything seemed to come up negative and Aaron hit a bit of a brick wall last year. Then, during some Marketplace therapy scrolling, along came the R-model.
“I saw it and it was mint; it ticked all our boxes of having an air start, bogie drive and twin stick – I frothed at the air-start,” he says.
“It wasn’t dad’s Valueliner, but they are pretty much the same, just with different headlights. I was deciding over whether to buy it and Krystal piped up and told me to get it, as it was perfect and I’d wanted to get one for so long. She was the force behind it.”
The truck was located just on the ACT border and had pretty much been a one-company vehicle. In its former life, the 340hp Coolpower R-series had been used to haul machinery around to job sites before being converted into a bogie tipper. All it took was one look from Aaron to know the truck had been extremely well looked after.
“As soon as we looked at the interior and under the bonnet, we were sold. You just don’t see them in such tidy original condition,” he says.
After expecting to turn up and find it housing chickens or decaying in the back paddock, the Veseys snapped up the Mack and rushed it home.
“We thought it was going to be a big project, a full restore, but we pretty much came home, gave it a service, registered it and it was good to go,” he says.
“It’s not finished yet – I still have plans. Dad’s truck was signed and scrolled with ‘Jacob’s Pride’ on the back wall for my brother. This one will get the signs and scrolls and have ‘Barry’s Pride’ on it.
“I’m just taking my time. The condition it was in when we agreed to buy it meant I could take my time and do it properly.”
The progress so far has been steady. When the truck arrived at the Vesey household, it was running and weathered. It was then given a full mechanical service and check over, scrubbed and rubbed back to base before it was repolished and shined up.
“When we got it, it had single stack on it, so I sent it into PJ at Muffler Centre and said it needs duals,” Aaron laughs.
“They did a full custom exhaust system, so it’s 5’ from the turbo into 7’ stacks.”
That was done last year – this year’s progression has seen the stunning super chrome wheels added to the little workhorse.
While the time is being taken to refurb the R-model, it is not getting itself an easy shed life. The small family company still needs to make money, and Aaron absolutely loves getting behind the wheel of the 43-year-old truck and finding his happy place.
“You’re tired when you get home at the end of the day, you’re working it and you feel it, but you also have a smile from ear to ear. I love it, it’s a real truck,” he says.
Aaron’s R-model does not contain any of the mod-cons many drivers are reliant on, and it doesn’t have all the smart features we also feel we depend on.
There’s no Bluetooth, no smart wheel and no climate control. It is not equipped with all the fancy air-ride systems or traction control braking systems that make our lives easier as drivers. What makes this such an impressive truck though, is that it has character and durability and it allows Aaron to go to work with a massive smile on his face and, most importantly, it allows Aaron the luxury of family time when he wants it. All of those attributes ensure that the Mack is the modern machine for Aaron, Krystal and the family.
I wanted to finish up with a little wanted ad. I did run this past the boss first (Krystal Vesey) and got permission, so let’s see if we can keep our ear to the ground and hunt out the Vesey Valueliner – VIN: VLR688RS12916. The truck 6FM01L08GALR00904 was delivered to Barry on April 20, 1990. Apparently, in 1999 a company called DAYNET P/L requested a load rating for it, other than that it’s a bit of a golden unicorn. Thanks for any assistance.
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