Bernie Forrsman
Bernie Forssman was born and bred in Colac, Victoria. In 1972 Bernie headed to the NT to play Aussie rules for the Nightcliff Tigers Football Club. Through mates he was playing footy with he got an opportunity to start work at the Darwin BP Terminal as a casual yardy. In 1973 Bernie was thinking about leaving the NT but there was an opening as a truck driver in a permanent position at the Darwin BP Terminal, so he decided to stay for another dry season.
Bernie’s first truck while driving for BP was an old Austin, with 2 small cross tanks. He was carting fuel around Darwin and into rural areas. In 1974 Bernie was promoted to driving a Mercedes Semi-trailer. Fortunately, Bernie was out of town on Christmas Day 1974 when Cyclone Tracey hit Darwin. Bernie remembers, “Cyclone Tracey’s winds picked a fridge up out of the workshop and belted it into one of the diesel tanks, putting a large dent in the side of the diesel tank.” On his return to work, Bernie became very busy carting fuel in and around Darwin, supplying contractors who were helping with the clean-up and the ongoing re-build.
ln 1977, still with BP, Bernie progressed through the ranks to driving the long-haul trips to Tennant Creek, 1000kms south of Darwin, and to a mine called Warrego just outside Tennant Creek. Bernie was driving a double road train. Back then, Stuart Highway was only a single bitumen road so two trailers was the maximum length vehicle allowed.
By the early 80s, a lot of work was completed on the Stuart Highway and a third trailer was allowed to be hooked up and towed in combination. By the late 80s, Bernie was carting jet fuel into Alice Springs and Ayers Rock Airport.
In 1994, a significant change occurred when BP transitioned its transport division over to the BP Distributor, AFD (which is known today as Directhaul). Bernie was about to embark on a new era. From 1994 through to 2000, AFD began to grow and in 2001 Bulktrans was created — which inherited the existing AFD road train drivers who continued to cart AFD's and BP's fuel. During this time Bernie continued to drive to Alice Springs from Darwin with aviation fuel. In 1997 Bernie was one of the first five drivers to drive quad road trains in the NT.
In 2008, the business changed its name from Bulktrans to Directhaul, and Bernie continued doing what he loves to do, driving. In 2019 Bernie was awarded the National Trucking Industry Professional Driver of the year award which was presented at the ATA conference in Perth.
Bernie is now in his 70s and continues carting fuel from Darwin to Alice Springs weekly. He completed a total of 22 years for BP Australia and is currently in his 31st year for Directhaul, clocking up close to a combined 12 million kms, mostly on the Stuart Highway. In the early days, Bernie was driving an Austin truck delivering 10,000 litres while more recently he has been driving a tri-drive T909 Kenworth pulling 4 trailers delivering up to 145,000 litres of jet fuel with a gross weight of 164.5 tonne. Bernie is still a valuable member of our NT Directhaul team.
