Mr Gyde also said he had never seen a man with such neat handwriting and that he was an excellent artist as well.
"He left Farmers Transport and went to work for Logistics for a while and I believe he has only been with this company for a few weeks but he was still living in Dannevirke, where his four children are.
"I can also say he was a great dad and he will be sorely missed," Mr Gyde said.
Bulls chief fire officer Brian Carter said firefighters arrived to find the truck had crashed into the building and was lodged under the verandah.
Mr Carter said they had a hard job to get the driver out of the cab. The truck had smashed through a street light and 1metre of that was still under the vehicle. Emergency services had to wait for the electricity supply to be disconnected.
The verandah's trusses and studs had smashed through the top of the cab and a steel girder was in the passenger seat.
When they did manage to get the driver out, a fireman performed CPR, but the man died a short time later in an ambulance.
Mr Carter said there was potential for an explosion because the truck was carrying pressurised cyclinders of oxygen, acetylene and LPG. The fear was that some of the valves had broken off, he said, but none had been damaged.
"There were some anxious moments until they established the cylinders were intact, as the wooden RSA building was tinder dry."
Diversions were in place around the accident scene for several hours but SH1 was reopened by 9am.
Steve Thomas, acting Senior Sergeant of the Feilding Police, said emergency services were called to the scene at 3.38am.
"The truck was southbound at the time of the crash, but at this stage we do not know what has caused the driver to smash into the building, but it appears he has failed to take a slight bend in the road."
Council building inspectors would be assessing the building, and the Serious Crash Unit and the Commercial Investigation Unit would investigate the incident, he said.
Geoff Connelly, from the Bulls RSA, said the damage to the building was more superficial than structural and it held together well considering the circumstances. The building was insured and assessors had already visited and made their assessment.
"It didn't look great when I arrived at work but, it wasn't as bad as it looked. There was debris everywhere, which has been cleaned up," he said.
Despite the damage, the RSA opened as usual. A 12 metre section of the footpath outside the building had been closed but that did not affect RSA patrons.
They were now waiting for an engineer's report on the damaged part of the building, Mr Connelly said.
"It is an old building but in the past a fair bit of steel work has been done to strengthen the place and this is what has stopped the truck from coming further into the building.
"We have been operating all day without any problem.
"We are very resilient - just like Dannevirke, we carry on," he said.
