Noel Lacey

Noel James Lacey aka Fruitcake is one of seven children and started in trucking by helping his father drive his council trucks and now he has over 40 years in the transport industry.

In 1977 Noel got his truck licence and began driving for Lake Boga Transport where he pulled tautliners, refrigerated vans, flattops and tippers. Noel started with single trailers and gradually started to drive B-doubles. He then drove for Coins Transport in Melbourne delivering containers on the wharves and then interstate with Eric Anderson in Euston driving an S-line carting grain and doing refrigerated vans to and from the markets and general freight. Noel mainly carted grain and was required to load on the farms.

Noel's boss had a new reflector placed on the front of his truck with FRUITCAKE written on it, the boss thought it would be funny to have this on there as every time they saw Noel he was walking around with a piece of boiled fruitcake in his hand. Noel would go to work each week with a 12" boiled fruitcake that would sit beside his seat and he would randomly cut slabs off and eat it and still does this. To everyone's surprise he left that reflector on the front of the truck and it became the talk on the road for some time and he still carry's this nickname to this day.

Almost every school holidays Noel's three children, Richard, Karen and Pauline would go on trips in the truck with their dad, where he would always give the air horn a good blasting to their delight. Noel would always take his BBQ with him on trips to save money, also heated up tins of peas, carrots and corn on the truck motor.

Noel eventually moved to Queensland and drove for a small landscaping firm making local deliveries. He then returned to his true love of interstate truck driving by going back to Pickering Transport driving a B-double including security loads.

Now living in Bendigo, Noel has been carting wool to and from Melbourne and Sydney for Wooltrans for the past 11 years in his Western Star.