Owner/Driver #328

owner profile
MELBOURNE-BASED truckie Daniel King
tells us it started for him like it did for
many other operators, in the cab of his
old man’s trucking putting in a mile.
“They reckon I was virtually
conceived in a truck,” Daniel laughs
when asked of his earliest memory in
a rig.
“There are so many photos of me in
the truck, because i was going to work with my old
man for as long as I can remember.
“By the age of about 11 or 12, I was operating
the forklift and delivering the bricks we carted to
site. It’s all I wanted to do, to be in the brick truck
helping,” he says.
Daniel’s teen years saw him spending less time
around trucks but, as is the case when it’s in your
blood, it didn’t take long before he was straight
back into it.
“By the time I was a teenager I played footy and
hung out with mates and went away from trucks
a little bit, but once 21 came around I was straight
down to the driving school to get my licence.
“I was working with dad [Bryan King] at the time
driving the truck as a ‘learner’ and I dropped dad
home and drove to the driving school for my lesson
– truck and trailer hitched,” he laughs.
“I told them I wanted to do the lesson in our
truck!”
It all started for the family’s transport operation
with one trusty Scania 141, when Daniel’s
grandfather John King decided to hit go on the
Swedish steed back in 1981.
“My grandpa John King bought his first Scania
in 1981, a 141. Dad worked for his father from 1981
until 1989 and then Dad bought his first Scania, the
143H that he still has,” he says.
“I suppose I got pushed into it; he put the trust in
me once I got my licence and put me in his Scania
143 on my own running around for 4 to 5 years
before I went up into a Mack Quantum truck
and dog.”
In his late 20s it was time for Daniel to jump into
the family’s newest addition, a Mack Trident, which
Daniel was pretty keen on buying off his old man.
“It wasn’t long in the Mack Trident before I
decided to buy it, and from there it was head down
bum up working for Boral,” he says.
Chasing a dream
A dream of Daniel’s, like most truckies young and
old, was to own the holy grail – an SAR Kenworth.
Years of hard work in his Mack Trident were
paying off and Daniel figured it was time to chase
down his goal of owning a Kenny.
“In 2017 I traded the Mack in and bought a
Kenworth T610 SAR, which I still have,” he says,
“I still remember the day I picked up the new
Kenworth after working with James Leo from
Hallam Truck Centre to get everything right.”
Daniel, with the help of James, spec’d out the
Kenworth as a 19-metre quad-dog with a BTE-built
tray, suited perfectly for the bricks he’d be carting.
“It was almost to the day that it was delivered and
I wandered down there pretty nervous actually, but
I was absolutely rapt,” he recalls.
16 MAY 2020 ownerdriver.com.au