With a Bigfoot onboard you’ll monster any surface
There were also exercises in New Caledonia and Australia, driving NZ Army trucks.
Last year, he completed a transport sergeant’s course – putting him in charge of running about 16 of the Army’s new Rheinmetall MAN HX58s. “And I had about a half a dozen Pinzgauers and three or four Mercs.”
So how come he decided to quit the Army and work for Hautapu? He explains: “I got a text from the old man to say, ‘hey, what are you up to? Oh, me and Greg are on our way around.’ I was thinking: ‘Oh, here we go! What’s going on?’
“And then it was ‘do you want to run the business – but run it from home?’ It gave me the freedom to be able to spend more time at home and be there for the kids and support the wife – since she’d supported me for so long. And it became a no-brainer really.
“It took me about an hour after that…to go: ‘I think this is a good idea.’ And my wife was saying the same thing.”
So how has it been? “With the Army you can do a whole bunch of changes, as long as you stick within the rules of what they’ve asked for. And it doesn’t really affect anyone because you normally get young drivers who don’t know any better.
“Whereas with Dad and them, you can do subtle changes – but you can’t do big changes because these guys have been driving (some of them) for over 30 years! And you don’t want the young gun to come in and change it all up and then you have a shitfight…. and then you find out that the manager’s the problem. And you lose good drivers.”
Thus his approach has been to “get in, get your feet wet and figure out what’s going on – and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
“The hardest part is just understanding what and where everything goes – and trying to make everything more efficient.
“The good thing is that when you don’t know something, Dad’s got years and years of experience and Greg and them have got heaps of experience – and it’s just a matter of asking the questions if you don’t know.”
Greg Johnson is Hautapu’s southern superviser and yard foreman, “because he’s pretty much the man to go to, to fix anything that breaks on the trucks. He’s worth his weight in gold that man.
“Dad’s had 30, 40 years of experience and it’s all in the top two inches and I’ve tried to download that information and ask the right questions.
“And the boys are generally pretty good. They’ll say, ‘hey, what about this and what about that?’ ”
So, he sums up, “it is an enjoyable job. The biggest challenges are not from within the company itself – it’s the stuff that you have no control over. Such as, there’s a slip on the road or the ports are closed or something happens and you’re like: ‘Oh shit, I’ve got to make a plan’ – you’ve gotta make it work to keep the trucks making money. That can be the hardest problem.”
He reckons that driver-wise, he’s happy with Hautapu’s longtime concept – that “good trucks get good drivers. And Mum and Dad have done pretty well.
“Everyone you talk to – everyone – says that the trucks look awesome. And Mum and Dad are pretty modest and they don’t like to talk about themselves – they’ve just let their trucks do the talking, which is pretty cool. And I guess that’s where I fit in too: I’m not a big fan of talking about myself.”
So is he thinking about a longterm future with Hautapu? “My boy is – he’s truck mad,” he laughs: He loves his toy trucks and cars and stuff, so hopefully in the future it’s his problem.
“I suppose in the interim….in reality Mum and Dad aren’t going to
be here forever to make those calls and I guess I’m in the position now that I’m in the thick of it. And sometimes I have to make those calls, and I guess whether it’s right or wrong, a decision was made.
“And that’s something that Dad has taught us throughout the years….is make a decision. Whether it’s the right or wrong one, go with it, and if it’s wrong, then you learn from it. If it’s right, well shot! Well done.”
Back to Kevin. Is this really all driven by a love of trucks? “I’ve got a passion…..for the job and the industry and the people around me. I think it’s a combination. I do also have a passion for trucks and being a truckie – being behind the wheel, experiencing new trucks, new technology.
“I mean, I’m driving now one of the latest Scanias on the road. It’s only six months old and you just couldn’t beat it.”
It’s the same passion that convinced him that buying into the business was no risk whatsoever: “No, no – not even on the first day. Because I knew my heart and soul was in it – the same heart and soul and passion that’s still there.
“And that I try to surround myself with drivers of the same ilk – because I know the sacrifices families make for drivers. All of our drivers are home every night, they’re all local, still in Taihape – except for our two drivers in Turangi.”
He’s clearly proud that this is the way it is – and the fact that Hautapu’s growth hasn’t come on the back of some ruthless competitive urge – but from the organic growth of Trevor Benson’s mill, harvesting and forestry businesses.
“We haven’t taken other people’s work. Our own work has gotten bigger. We’ve just grown what we’ve already got.”
The very best bits of running the business all these years, he reckons, include being able to buy a new truck when you need to:
“That’s a bit of a buzz, because you can.”
And, even moreso, there’s “the satisfaction, on a day-to-day basis, when our plan that we made the day before works without too many hiccups. And that’s pretty satisfying – that everything worked well.” It is, he adds, hard to achieve because “in this game, there’s always something goes wrong.”
So now, he reckons, from his perspective Hautapu Haulage is in a good situation “with a new plan…. new ideas. I guess the biggest thing for me is letting go and letting George (Tipene) bring his ideas through and kind of take over.
“The future? I mean, logging is always going to be around – it’s just what capacity we are going to be here. That might not be my decision – that may be someone else’s, who knows? It might be George’s decision or the industry itself.”
So…never mind the 3am starts every working day, for Kev, running Hautapu Haulage has never been a hardship: “It wasn’t hard. It had its moments…..but it was just like a hand in a glove.” It all just came naturally.
But there must have been tough times? Says Kev: “Well there definitely have been tough times and struggles, but I’ve never, ever felt like giving up on it. It’s given us a job – that we’ve enjoyed every day. So it’s not like work.
“I’ve always loved what I’ve done. And I’ve had such a supportive wife, like you would not believe. She’s looked after the kids, because I was working to get us ahead.
“I just love being out there on my own, driving and doing the job. I still bounce out of bed at 2 o’clock in the morning now – as I did 20 years ago.”
Because, just like the 17-year-old Kevin at the wheel of Trevor Benson’s old, underpowered Dodge, he’s in his happy place. T&D
OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO, ARDENT ROAD TRANSPORT industry advocate and NRC stalwart Paula Rogers was looking through the kitchen window of her family’s farmhouse when the image of a bright blue Kenworth changed her life’s direction forever.
“When I was about 17 I got into the farming sector and in my 20’s ended up sharemilking at a farm in Whenuapai . We had a lot of trucks coming onto the farm to tip off and I just happened to look out of the kitchen window at Mike Ross’s beautiful blue Kenworth W model (924), I’ll never forget that moment, I thought gosh that truck is stunning I’d really like to drive a truck. So, I decided then and there to go and get my HT.”
Of course, Paula needed to first gain some experience, so a few friendly truck owners came to her rescue. One was Royce Mills from
Mills Bobcat Services, he had a 1982 Dodge 4-wheeler 8-tonne tip truck with a 540 Perkins V8 and a 6-speed manual box, “I jumped in that and graunched the gearbox a number of times, but then got the hang of it,” Paula recalls.
Also Kevin Brashier of Brashier Earthmoving, he had a Ford N-Series 4-wheeler flat deck that he let Paula drive around Ponsonby. Paula says, “we went up roads full of BMW’s and Porsche’s, it was a great learning curve because I didn’t want to hit one of those. I actually got my HT in that N-Series.”
While still working on the farm, Paula’s first job was driving a mini tanker for Mini-Fuel, back in the day when the Gulf Harbour development was just starting.
She says, “I used to go fill up machinery and gear on the new bit of motorway on SH1 and even the ship generators for the Navy. I got to climb up on the compactors and scrapers it was great, at the Gulf Harbour job there was a digger on the barge that I used to refuel. I’d hop into the bucket and he’d swing me over the water and onto the barge. I was about twenty-six then, so that was a few years ago, you couldn’t do that nowadays, all the fun’s gone out of the industry.” she jokes.
When her mum passed, Paula took a bit of a breather from the industry before getting into aggregate trucking. She drove for Bob Turner Transport in their N-series 6-wheeler working primarily on the Westgate development ‘doing a lot of tipping’. She really enjoyed her time there but also got a real quick lesson about checking that her tailgate was correctly shut as she lost a load going up the hill beside the Bethells quarry. ‘I had to get the broom out and even the loader needed to come and help’.
According to Paula she felt like she was ‘Queen of the highway’ back then driving but also acknowledges that being a woman in a male dominated industry was pretty hard.
“I heard my nickname was ‘hotpants’ and there were a lot of comments about me driving but I couldn’t let it get to me. I had to let a lot of it go over the top of my head, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t
(centre); have survived, thankfully the industry has addressed diversity.
Paula believes that because she worked hard at gaining knowledge about trucks and how they worked, she gained industry respect pretty quickly. Also the fact that when she was growing up, her parents had a wrecking yard in Tauranga, “so cars have been a really big thing for me - I’m a bit of a petrolhead I suppose. I ‘walked the talk’ which I think helped”.
Following a marriage separation, an opportunity came up at TWL (Transport Wholesale) in Penrose. She says that she was one of the first female customer services in the Gough’s group. “It was a testing time for me because the owners would ring up and ask me for a doughnut to try to trip me up, they were surprised when I said do you have a 40 or 50mm ring feeder. I learnt very quickly about the parts and even used to climb under the trucks and trailers to identify the axles and suspensions”.
Evidently her time at TWL was an interesting one. Aside from getting to know a lot about parts and the members that she deals with now, in 2000 she won a boat and two kegs of beer from Radio Hauraki and subsequently received five marriage proposals. “That was quite a hard case.”
With aspirations of being a rep for TWL, but no openings available at that stage, an opportunity arose for Paula to join the Road Transport Association, which she took.
“My area was Auckland and I got to go around all the customers that I was dealing with at TWL. I managed to get most of them on board but also learnt the whole other side to the industry, the regulations and legislations.”
While at the RTA, Paula helped her then partner Lee Robinson set up Robinson Heavy Haulage and got to meet such ‘truckie legends’ as Lee’s dad Mick Robinson and Mate Franicevich. She says “I learnt so much off of those guys, they used to talk to me about the parts, the history of NZ trucking and what there was to know.”
Paula spent around five years at the RTA until her region became unviable and was disbanded. She was offered the chance to run some branches back at TWL, however, a job appeared at NRC - “So that’s where I went.”
Over the past twelve and a half years Paula has seen the industry change and experienced a lot at NRC. From the high’s of being involved with an industry that’s ‘like family’, to the lows of hearing how hard the industry is for some people and dealing with an unsympathetic government.
“I love going to schools, talking to students and promoting the industry. Telling them how to get into this great industry and that it’s a great way to see our country for free. Also, getting more women into road transport too. I’ve been in it for so long (about 26-years) so seeing more women out there driving I think is absolutely fantastic. Because we are better drivers at the end of the day. You can quote me on that. We’re easier on the gear.”
However Paula admits that it can be a hard industry. “I give 100% to the industry, it’s not just an 8-5 job, it’s 24/7. I hear about people’s personal, financial and business issues and its very gratifying when I can help them out from my training and experience. And I don’t think the government actually gives the road transport industry a lot of respect, they don’t realise that we keep the country moving, we’re targeted too easily with high RUC’s and given poor roads to drive on.”.
Paula is quick to point out the importance of the association, “we’ve got to have the support to have that voice and representation. I work with a really great team and the board are fabulous they contribute a lot to the industry and association.”
The Association has been important for her on a personal level too. “I met my husband through NRC and we’re coming up to our 9th wedding anniversary. Warren is with Fletcher Construction and was looking to get information about trucks, legislations and regulations and was told to give me a call. I met him, signed him up with the NRC and he got the bonus prize – me, he talks cranes, I trucks it’s a perfect match”. She does say laughingly that this is not a regular sign up deal.
Paula has got two sons, Shane who is a qualified butcher and Matthew who has a class 5 and is driving with Tally-ho Industries in Rotorua. “I’ve even helped the industry by providing one driver,” she jokes, “am proud of my sons and their achievements”.
When not being all-consumed by road transport, Paula was secretary for Women’s Refuge for 6-years and is an American car fanatic. She used to have a ‘65 Cadillac and now has a ‘72 Mustang Mach 1 in her garage.
“I love the old gear, cars and trucks too. Modern trucks are beautiful to drive, they’re like driving a car but I love the old gear, it’s like the industry icons, it’s the history. Just like that old Dodge, it was a dog to drive but a great truck”. Paula’s favourite truck is still a Kenworth W924.
Paula reckons that there are so many legends out there that have given so much to the industry, “they have worked their way up to what they’ve got today, it’s so gratifying” and the same can be said about her.
“It’s been a really interesting time looking back, road transport is my life”. T&D
Paula’s 1972 Mach 1 Mustang