Driving Ambition

Now 19, Co Londonderry’s Kieran McCauley enjoyed school but couldn’t wait to live his dream. He’s now at the wheel of a Daf XF105 Space Cab pulling a fuel tanker

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For a young lad from County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, it’s always been a dream to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather to drive a truck. As a baby still in nappies, Kieran McCauley spent many years travelling in lorries with his dad Paul behind the wheel and he caught the trucking bug from a very young age.

Some 18 years later, Kieran couldn’t wait to take the LGV tests so he, too, could get behind the wheel of a lorry. While his peers were receiving their A-level exam results in August last year, Kieran was happily driving his lorry on another road trip to Dublin – a journey he had already made on his 19th birthday on July 10, when he was behind the wheel of his 2013 Daf XF105 Space Cab, hauling fuel in its 40ft tanker trailer.

Left school at 18

Despite his trucking ambitions, Kieran did manage to enjoy school until he was in the lower sixth form at St Columb’s College in Londonderry, and had already achieved quite promising grades in his mock exams. However, he knew that a life on the road is what he really wanted and left school as soon as he reached 18 in order to achieve his dream.

“It’s not that I didn’t enjoy school,” says Kieran. “It’s just that I preferred to be driving a lorry. When all my friends were posting their A-level results on social media, I was out driving the lorry and tanker without a care in the world. It’s something that I really wanted to do and I have absolutely no regrets about leaving school to go trucking.

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