Truck owner Des McNally and driver Bob Findley are both keen on the Freightliner brand, although Des gets first chop with the Coronado
It was a Saturday afternoon, and Des McNally and his regular driver Robert ‘Bob’ Findley had rolled up in a Freightliner Coronado at the Gull Port Augusta truck stop for a meal, shower and a break.
The Coronado is one of three Freightliners that Des and his wife Carol operate, the other two being a Century Class and an Argosy.
Des has been in and around trucks from an early age. His father was a soldier settler in Queensland’s Wandoan district with a background in earthmoving.
After years in agricultural contracting, he moved into interstate driving.
Bob, like Des, was involved in clearing scrub in Queensland, often in the same district. And, in unlikely fashion, they met in 2012 while in a line-up to unload in Adelaide.
“I was carting steel to Adelaide from Wollongong and pulled up behind Des,” Bob recalls.
“I gave him a hand to un-tarp and we grabbed a coffee and had a yarn.
“Des needed to take time off for an operation and needed a driver for a month after that.”
A couple of weeks after returning to work, Des rang Bob and offered him a permanent job.
“That was four and a half years ago, and the beauty of it is that we have the same background and we talk the same language,” he muses.
Bob has spent most of his life driving dozers, back hoes and excavators while working at Telstra over 18 years, where he installed fibre optic cables.
“I was a supervisor when I was made redundant, so I ended up truck driving and in turn meeting Des,” Bob explains.
Des elaborates, saying that Bob is in the process of building a yacht to sail the world.
“It’s my job to keep him poor, poor enough so he doesn’t have enough money to finish his boat,” Des grins.
“Because when he finishes the boat, I will lose him.”
Read more about Des and Bob, and their Freightliner passion, in the May issue of Owner//Driver. Subscribe here.