Six Decades Carting Hay: A Chat with Graham Thomson (Thommo)

Jon Paul Driver 0:05
Welcome to the Feed Central Hay Matters Podcast. Your go to source for all things hay related in Australia. I’m your host, Jon Paul Driver. In today’s episode, we’re joined by Graham Thompson, but you’ll probably know him as Thommo. Welcome to the podcast.

Thommo 0:20
Thank you.

Jon Paul Driver 0:21
Tim was telling me ahead of time, your claim to fame is that you’ve been carting hay for some number of years, that’s greater than most everybody else that’s ever carted hay. How long have you been hauling hay? When did you start?

Thommo 0:33
I started when I was 14 years old. I got up for the contract job for a shilling a bale, which I don’t know how much that is in today’s language. It’s 10 cents in Australian today, but it was good money in those days. This was 62 years ago.

Jon Paul Driver 0:54
You’ve been carting hay for 62 years.

Thommo 0:58
And I’ve never missed a year and that’s ever since that first time of doing some contract hay carting.

Jon Paul Driver 1:04
Can you tell us about that first experience?

Thommo 1:06
It was quite funny. The hay was about a mile away from where it had to go. A neighbor asked my father, would I cart it? And Dad said, yeah, you can have the tractor. You can have a little low trailer, go and get your schoolmate to help you. And I said, oh, blow my schoolmate, he’ll want sixpence, half the money, if I have to get him, I’ll do the whole lot myself. So I rigged the tractor up with two pieces of hay band to keep it steering up the rows, and I’d jump off, put it in low gear, jump off, run along, put 30 odd bales on the trailer, and then drive back to the shed. In three days, I had the whole 1000 bales cut, cart it in, and had the equivalent of four weeks basic wage in Australia. At that time, which my mother said, that’s not bad money. You want to stick at this job. So I thought, it’s not bad money, like it was big money if you get four times of basic wage in three days when you’re 14 year old.

Jon Paul Driver 2:20
That was wealth and opulence. You thought you were the rich, the richest 14 year old in Australia?

Thommo 2:25
Well, I probably was, then, but not really, but.

Jon Paul Driver 2:29
Yeah, of course

Thommo 2:29
And I decided to stick at it. Well, by the time I was 18, I had enough money saved up out of my hay to buy a new vehicle.

Jon Paul Driver 2:38
And what was it?

Thommo 2:40
A Ford Falcon Ute. Being young and stupid, I managed to crash and write it off in a couple of years time, but that happened back in those days, probably still does.

Jon Paul Driver 2:53
For sure.

Thommo 2:54
I kept on doing contract hay carting when I got later years into the like, 45 years ago, I was very, very lucky. Was very lucky to get offered, through a mate, a contract to supply hay to a very big feed lotting situation. They were talking 15,000 tons of hay per annum, back in this was 1978 which those days, all that hay was in what we term idiot bricks, which are small square bales, and that meant a huge amount of work like to shift that much high was just mind boggling. We got to we managed to do it one big year. I finished up with three trucks running. We had to carted anything up to up to 200 miles away back and get it there. So it was virtually one trip a day job. You had to have men labor. Looking back, I don’t know how we did it, but we did.

Jon Paul Driver 4:08
That’s a tremendous amount of small pails.

Thommo 4:10
That was, it was just mind boggling. I remember one year we carted in two months just off the property I was living on and around the area, I carted 70,000 down in six weeks, and they fed it out at the feed lots in April, May, and they fed it out in 10 days. So, we had a lot of those other contractors involved too. Cut forward a little bit to the very early well the early 80s, or in the 80s, round rolls came in. We thought terrific, because you can front end loader put six foot wide round rolls on too wide on the truck drives straight down the highway in those days with no escorts or anything. Fact, that 12 foot wide, nobody seemed to worry. A few people did, but they got over it. That made a huge difference. So less labor, less trucks, and then I was very lucky to get involved. I got offered the contract of a different feed lot, and they wanted the same amount of hay but big squares came in the first of the Heston big squares. My area was the first place in Australia to get the four before big Heston bales and one of the dealers, I think it was about 84 or five, he sold more big square balers than any other dealer in the world, and got a free trip back to Italy to see where they’re made.

Jon Paul Driver 5:56
Huh? Well, that’s a good deal.

Thommo 5:59
Yeah, it was just mind boggling the amount of hay that was getting done. And of course, it moved on from there into we were exporting sheep and a few cattle in those days to the Middle East. I did get involved in putting small squares on boats to go and feed dairy cattle in Saudi Arabia, that was a bit of another story. It was hard work. There was no double dump bales or anything. They all went up on a crane, manually stacked in the not in a hole, but in a shed thing, and then fed out to the cattle going over and some kept, of keep the cattle going over there. So that was probably some of the very first hay that was exported out of Australia. That would have been, I think, in 84 from then I spent the next, probably till the early 2000s just constantly cutting hay with two or three trucks on the road, and the job slowed down. I can’t remember the time the Middle East war over there, slowed the whole job right down.

Jon Paul Driver 7:21
That would have been early 90s. Does that sound right? Or?

Thommo 7:24
That’s right, that’d be about right. So, I thought, oh, well, listen, domestic market, and I’d by that time it geared up into back in the day, you’re only allowed 40 foot trailers. I’d got pushed the outer boundaries, if that’s the expression, and gone to anything up to 46 and low profile drop deck trailers, I could get a big amount of hay on. So I started cutting domestically then, and got very involved in that running hay virtually anywhere from a home base, which is South Western Victoria, which is right down the bottom, and we’d go as far as Queensland, which anything up to 2000 kilometers, with hay right up into Queensland, place called Cameron’s Corner, which is border of South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland, around the East, East Coast, right up Bega, all through there. And it was very good, because people, especially, it was mainly dairy, but some of it was drought people, and they were very even in those days, realized that, oh, this bloke, most trucks are getting 15 tons of hay on this place, getting 22 or three. That’s economics, as far as the delivered end product. So, they were finished up then with two trucks doing that, and then back into the other jobs. I’ve got very, very, very busy in that early 2000s time I got to about 2000 and probably 10 or 15, I thought it’s getting a bit hard work. Truck drivers were getting harder to get, or pointers, as we used to describe them, which is just some bloke that knows how to sit behind the steering wheel, but he’s got no idea how to drive down the road. There was a bit of that went on. So I backed off back to one truck. I’ve still run a truck now but my age, just for our own local work, and probably still do a 1000, 1500 tons of hay yearly, just for my own personal clients that have lived close. I don’t do much long distance work, probably the furthest I drive is two or 300 kilometers on a trip I don’t go right up 1000s of kilometers. Looking back, I can still remember what my mother said at that first job, that, no, you want to stick with this, there’s money in it, but you’ll have some hard work. And I thought, well, I don’t think hard work ever killed anybody that I know of, and it’s good. There’s only one thing you probably can’t put this in a podcast. It’s very good for the beer industry too. because when you’re carting hay, you have to have a cool drink at night time,

Jon Paul Driver 10:35
Ah, especially when you’re moving small bales. It’s the electrolytes. It’s a real thing.

Thommo 10:41
That’s exactly right. Another aside that I’ve been very passionate about for the last 25 years was a thing called the Australian Fodder Industry Association, which I got. I was actually an inaugural yeah that’s the right word, member, and and the founder of it, we thought, yeah, we need something Australia is, well, you can’t get lost in Australia because it’s just water all around the edge as a fence. You can’t get out of it. So, we might as well all stick together. And it’s been a very, very good trip that I’ve really enjoyed it still do to this day, because the thing with hay and general farming in general, that if you don’t keep learning something new every year, that’s when the wheels start falling off, even though you may not use that expertise that’s offered to you, you know it’s there, so you have to keep your head above the water, otherwise, we’re still running around cutting hay with a with scythe. If we didn’t, you know, follow technology when it first started, I thought, if you know that came out with the new which I had some of, you know, just the seven foot. We used to use an old sickle mower. We thought that was good. It broke down. You ran a bit of wire throughout every then that came out with disc mowers. We’ve just kept on moving on. And if you don’t follow technology, well, you’re behind the eight ball, and there’s still some older farmers out there that you know they won’t move ahead with the times.

Jon Paul Driver 12:29
I don’t know very many still cutting hay with a scythe.

Thommo 12:33
No, there’s not many, but

Jon Paul Driver 12:35
I do know that if you put a cap underneath your elbow as you’re running that scythe, that’s the proper position and technique to run one.

Thommo 12:44
Yes

Jon Paul Driver 12:45
But, I used to find somebody that was quite experienced in life, well, on his in his years, to teach me that.

Thommo 12:52
Yeah, well, I knew a chap and well, he’s passed away now, but he was still doing the hay with the horses and binder,

Jon Paul Driver 13:03
Really?

Thommo 13:03
And he was actually a very clever bloke, and he kept on doing it. And it got to be a historic type thing. People would come and watch it, because he had four Clydesdale horses. He towed the little binder. They went into stooks

Jon Paul Driver 13:18
Yeah

Thommo 13:19
And I got a, I have got a photo at home of a Kenworth truck with 40 foot trailer behind it, loaded with sheaved hay

Jon Paul Driver 13:29
Really

Thommo 13:29
Which that was done in back in the 80s too. And the photo hangs in my office wall still to this day, big colored photo, because there’s not many people that carted sheaved hay in a Kenworth truck, not in this modern day and age.

Jon Paul Driver 13:46
Very, very No. Now that would have gone to a chaff mill, right?

Thommo 13:50
Yes, that was all used for chaff, Yep.

Jon Paul Driver 13:52
And that would have been the very highest quality too, because all the stems are laid the same direction.

Thommo 13:58
Yes, that was, and this chaff was actually right into horses. Some was sold, and he had some of the best chaff. He had his own chaff cutter as well, and it was kept for that specific reason. He had the best chaff in the district

Jon Paul Driver 14:17
Huh

Thommo 14:18
Bar none.

Jon Paul Driver 14:19
That’s, that’s quite something. I’d love to see that picture. If we can make that happen, that’d be great. Let’s double back to AFIA now, you said you were an inaugural member. You haven’t missed an AFIA meeting, have you?

Thommo 14:31
I have been to every conference that’s been held, I think, yes, I’m told anyway, and well now I haven’t missed any. And they said, I’m yeah, the only person that’s been to everyone.

Jon Paul Driver 14:44
Now, we’re going to do a little bit of raw, raw for AFIA and industry associations. I’m a big fan. What are some of the personal benefits that you’ve had from attending AFIA meetings?

Thommo 14:55
I think the biggest personal things I’ve done is teriffic friends I’ve made, and I mean really, really good friends that I still have of last night after a meeting, I was looking for contacts. I have 54 contacts in my phone now, of direct people that I can just ring and talk to discuss things and they I think, I think I’ve got, every state in Australia, there’s somebody in every state in Australia that I’ve got their phone contacts that I won’t, won’t say there’s a lot of contacts in the phone that should be scrubbed out, but something like 500 of them all together. So, but yeah, the friends I’ve made when you get well, this year we’ve had a very poor season down there part of the world. Well, I can just get on the phone and ring somebody that might be a contact from years ago. Ah, G’day. Bill, how are you? Do you know where there’s any hay that I can find? Yep. So and So, my neighbors got some I’ll ring him. Get back to you. Those contacts over the years have been inviable, too, but mainly for me. For eighth year I spent the early years I was on the board. I was very involved for five or six years with research and development, actually sat on that board in Canberra, or the meeting she used to be Canberra. That was brilliant as well. But the main thing I’m sure, is the friends of personal friends I’ve made that I’ll remember well till the day I’m not here. That’s the best study tours I’ve been on. One learned a lot if you ran a study tour to America back in about 1820, years ago, approximately, I decided to go on it terrific. I shouldn’t say this. I had preconceived ideas of Americans that you know, the bit loud and whatever I got over there their farmers and no different to our farmers, and they’ll do anything for you, talk to you show but no, there was a few things happened on the trip that different farmers completely put themselves out to make sure our trip went all right. Terrific people. I learned a lot on that trip. Part of it was going to a John Deere factory shown right through it, manager John Deere speaking to us, terrific. Then a few of us decided to extend the study tour, and it was cheaper to fly home from San Francisco. Let’s blow this. We’ll go to England and come home to Australia. The back doorway through which we did that was also a bit of open mind. I thought England was only a small little paddock. We get over there and find a 50 foot mower 20 years ago,

Jon Paul Driver 18:08
Ah

Thommo 18:08
Five gang mower that we saw working. Oh, right, you’ve learned something, yeah, and you can cut an awful lot of hay with a 50 foot mower, especially self propelled, big thing. It was mind boggling. We said to the driver after he said, ah, I’ve never found enough country. He said, I’ve done 1000 acres in daylight. But he said, that’s, that’s as far as you can go.

Jon Paul Driver 18:34
That’s the biggest paddock you could find.

Thommo 18:37
No, no, that was about six paddocks to get that. Oh, but the whole thing folded up to 10-12, feet wide to drive down the roads, and it was mind boggling. I did another tour, then it was a private holiday, yeah, right through Europe. You go on a river, river cruise from down the bottom back up to Holland. And I picked all the the hay farming sides out well, I didn’t realize, you know, Germany, what they were doing there. They went on side tour out there for a day. Once again, you’ve got to keep learning, otherwise you get behind. I haven’t probably used a lot of those things that you know have come out because, well, we laughed about it just over the bloke, he said, Oh, you got GPS and your tractors. I said, No, because I said, some of the country I run hasn’t even got satellite coverage for fires, anything. We just put it up the old fashioned way we fertilize a contractor apologizes about one paddock because the satellite doesn’t work out here. It’s very good for governments. And everything to say will completely go digital all over the world. They want to forget that if it doesn’t work, you’ve got to go back to the old fashioned way, because the only way it works.

Jon Paul Driver 20:12
I was on a call with some folks from Montana who were celebrating that they finally got cell service in 2019

Thommo 20:21
Yeah, I can, I can believe that I had, I bought the first and I’ve still got it, and I’ve actually Googled it. I bought one of the first thing. They called them a bag phone.

Jon Paul Driver 20:33
Ah yes

Thommo 20:34
In the very early days, I have still got that phone home, in the shed, and I’ve researched it on the internet. It’s actually worth more now than I paid for the entire

Jon Paul Driver 20:46
It’s a collectors item.

Thommo 20:48
Yeah

Jon Paul Driver 20:49
Not to say that any of your trucks are collectors items, but you must have had quite the collection along the way.

Thommo 20:56
I haven’t really. I’ve always worked. I’ve never bought a new truck

Jon Paul Driver 21:00
Uh huh

Thommo 21:01
Because, even back in the day when trucks were cheaper, and I’m talking, you know, perhaps you could buy a new truck for a $100,000, the minute you drive that truck out the showroom and down the road and do two trips, suddenly only worth $90,000. So, I always stuck with buying good second hand vehicles. I think I’ve only had eight trucks altogether. I had no qualms whatsoever if a truck died, so to speak. Motor wise bingo is a repair place or place itself. New motors. I remember back in the little square days when we’re doing a 70,000, one of the old inters, she died, six cylinder inter. I rang Melbourne, and I said, you got a motor that’ll go yes. We went down. I had a local mechanic who was, well, wasn’t qualified, but he knew the job inside out. On Monday morning, that truck was back on the road with a new motor in it, going just like that, down the ute, grabbed the motor. Ute was probably a half overloaded, coming home. That didn’t matter, endless chain, dropped the motor in, hook her all up, and away she went. I did that with all my trucks, my old truck at, well, a lot of people remember. I’ve still got photos of it. The one said it’s got the sheaved hay on it. I bought that second hand at three years old. 1978 model. It is still going to this day, and it’s now based in Bendigo, with 9 million kilometers on it.

Jon Paul Driver 22:37
Oh

Thommo 22:39
It’s been rebuilt a few times, but it’s a farmer has got it there and still catch his own grain and stock with it. So that’s you can keep trucks going as long as you look after them, drive them sensibly and are prepared to well when they need a dollar spent on it. Just spend it.

Jon Paul Driver 23:01
Hmm, I suspect that’s advice that you’d give to anybody coming on up.

Thommo 23:05
Definitely would to anybody that was starting out. Because why do you want to? Most people start young, you’ve got family, everything you’ve got. Why do you need to hang another half a million dollars debt around you pay interest on you’re virtually driving for this to keep the banks happy. That’s pay the interest so you’re better off buying something you can afford, keep it going, look after it, and you’ll get ahead a long way quicker. I know a few blokes have done it. It’s all right, yeah, later on, I could have afforded to buy new trucks, but I thought I bought new tractors, but trucks here are just stuck with the very good second hand ones,

Jon Paul Driver 23:53
Really quick for American listeners that still use miles, that’s five and a half million miles on a truck,

Thommo 24:02
That’d be right, yep,

Jon Paul Driver 24:03
That’s, that’s just astounding.

Thommo 24:06
Yeah, it’s, it’s around the world a few times,

Jon Paul Driver 24:12
Many times, wow. One of the things Americans always think about when we think about Australian Trucking is the impressive loads that Australians can haul and legally haul, and maybe not legally haul. Do you have any particular runs or trips or loads that come to mind that was exceedingly special?

Thommo 24:32
Ah, yes, probably lots. But yes, we’re limited to when you’re tryna dragging one trailer to about ground the 43 tons. I remember pulling in to check a load to go quite some distance years ago, in the Weybridge, I thought, Ah, I knew the truck was working, getting it there. And I thought, I better call in and check this. And the bloke at the Weybridge said, you better go and take some of them off. Off. He said, You’re not allowed gross 60 ton. So I was only double. I had double on what I was meant to be, carting. There are still people that push the boundaries, but most of us now just stop somewhere around legal or you know, as close as you can. Yeah, because Australia is such a big place, you need, you need to be able to fill that truck up. And but I have it working. And, oh, chap is dead now. Said he talked me in in the early days. And he said, yep. And he said, If you stick with Kenworth trucks, they’ll pull anything. And he was pretty right. I’ve tried a few other brands, and if you stick with that and put the right motor in it, they’ll just pull I think it’s getting difficult, more difficult as we go. I think more government regulations coming in all the time. And I think that happens everywhere around the world now, and to me, yes, a lot of them are necessary, but they were only bought in because have, well, in Australia anyway, there’s always been idiots, literally for one term, I could think of others that just don’t know anything like I’ve seen blokes go down the road in a flat chat at over, well, 70, 70-80, miles an hour in American language, and they’ve got a couple of ropes over a load of hay and they wonder why It falls off and tips over when they go around the corner that they’re meant to be going around at 20 mile an hour, and they’re doing about 50, and the whole thing falls over. And then they wonder, why? So naturally, you have to have more regulations come in. But it’s only regulations are brought in for what I call idiots.

Jon Paul Driver 27:00
Ah, you know that that’s, that’s a very good point. I appreciate load securement. There’s, there’s few things more important to the integrity of the industry than good load securement. Now you would have hauled hay through Melbourne to Gippsland Dairies. Is that right?

Thommo 27:17
Hundreds of loads

Jon Paul Driver 27:19
Tell me a story

Thommo 27:20
We used to stack to out the other side of Melbourne, halfway through Gippsland. I had a we used to run the truck, 24/7, one driver do a trip. Truck would come back, load it up and go again. That’s how you get miles and trucks. But anyway, I was having my sleep time, this bloke rang up, and I told him which way to go. He turned off at one town, and that was all right, yeah, he’s right. About midnight, I get a phone call and yeah, what’s wrong? I think I hit a train. Oh, suddenly I’m 100% awake. And what he’d done was why I sent him the other way. There was a bridge that drove the train line went over the top, the road went underneath, and it was all sign posted 4.3 meters, which I knew we were allowed at that stage go to 4.6 I think. But I knew my load was about 4.4 because it measured it time and time again to know what it was. But this bloke decided to go the 4.3 way. Luckily, there must have been a couple of inches spare. He flattened all the sort of pushed the top bales down a fraction. Didn’t break any straps, but sort of pushed everything down that inch. That’s how hard, because he would have gone through underneath it 100 kilometers an hour. But it must have made a huge whoosh, type, Yeah, huge. What would you say? Whoosh on the truck as he went through, he thought he’d hit the train, but he had, but there, that’s, that’s just one of the stories, but there, I’ve never had any trouble going through like we had to go through Melbourne in the old days, before even there was a bridge over the river, so you had to detour your way around virtually through the city with a load of height, and long as you were careful, then they opened it up and they put a tunnel in which I can get through legally. So, that was good, but now trying to stay clear for it, because there’s about 10 million, 10 million other idiots trying to drive through Melbourne at the same time, so I kept out of the road.

Jon Paul Driver 29:54
For a young farmer or truck driver. Do you have any advice?

Thommo 29:59
Yes, young farmers, or all young truck drivers probably relates to both, is, if you’ve got a passion for it, stick with it. There’ll be a few ups and downs, because that’s just life. Probably one of the things you’ll meet a few people along the way that’ll they rub you up the wrong way for want of a better word. Don’t hold it completely against them and never talk to them again for life, because you can often learn something along the way. You’ll make the odd what’s termed an enemy. I’ve always worked on the theory of keeping in touch with those people, keeping it close enough that I can know what? Because they can’t backstab you from two feet away, but they’re very good at it from 100 yards back when, so to speak. So, yeah, you keep them. Keep them in the circle. Don’t drop them, because that’s when trouble can start. But no, look, if you’ve got a passion for either truck driving or farming, yes, the truck driving part of it, I think the young ones here now, they can’t get young truck drivers. There’s money to be made, but not as much as it was in the old days, because the corporates, as I call them, or the big companies, are just all they want to do is get product from one end of the country to the other as cheaply as possible. Bloke steering up the road, you don’t, you pay him as little as he’ll accept, so to speak. You can’t make the real dollar you could.

Jon Paul Driver 31:41
Thommo, this has been absolutely wonderful. I enjoy the stories and the understanding of where we come from, and then, of course, the sentiments around AFIA and connecting with people within the industry. The podcast is proudly presented by Feed Central. Stay tuned in for upcoming episodes.