Anita Dynes
Anita Dynes is credited as being crucial to the development of Tapanui-based Dynes Transport. Throughout her five decades in the transport industry, working alongside husband Jim, her substantive work ethic, tenacity, and family values were pivotal in the company becoming an iconic industry fixture, with interests in the dairy, forestry, and wine industries in addition to transport.
Born in Balclutha on 5 February 1948, Anita was brought up on a farm at Rongahere, South Otago.
She married in 1969 and moved to Tapanui, where Jim and his twin brother, John, had bought a five-truck general carrying transport business from Jim Cooper a few months earlier. Adapting to transport life for this inductee meant being tied at home to landline and radio telephone.
The 1970s was a hectic decade for Anita, with three children born and two more general transport businesses purchased. In 1976 Dynes won the contract to cart woodchips from five sawmills in Otago to Port Chalmers and later Bluff.
In 1977 John moved north to run T D Haulage, a chip carting business they purchased. Two years later they split ownership; John with T D Haulage,
Jim and Anita with Dynes Transport (Tapanui) Limited. The business grew extensively during the 1980s with additional log and timber cartage. The management of cashflow was essential and was a critical part of Anita’s role.
Diversification came about with the family farm at Conical Hill being purchased, adding to the workload with Jim working the farm during the day and carting woodchips at night. Family holidays were now farmstays for the weekends, to tackle lambing, tailing, and haymaking amidst daily transport activities.
Anita’s capabilities were put to the test when Jim was ill with cancer. Her daily activities included driving Jim the four-hour round trip to Dunedin for treatment every day, running the transport business, sorting the three kids, and helping with the lambing beat on a now increased additional neighbour’s farm.
In 1991 NZ Rail applied for resource consent to reopen the line from Waipahi to Conical Hill Sawmill. Anita opposed the application, spending months accumulating information for a petition and the hearing. Opening the line did not happen. During the mid-90s a new Tapanui depot was purchased, with a bigger yard, and the opportunity to move from the shoebox home office to the depot to accommodate additional staff.
Over the next 15 years, multiple businesses were purchased and contracts won, including work with the Edendale dairy factory. This was enhanced by the successful ISO accreditation that Anita implemented within the business, with Dynes Transport being one of the first in the South Island to be accredited. This helped secure additional work for future years and is still current with their nationwide Fonterra contract today.
Dynes Transport’s solid foundations were set with the strong business partnership of Anita and Jim, their different strengths working collaboratively together to grow the business that it is today. Anita’s strong work ethic, family values, and tenacity have been crucial to the success of Dynes Transport and have been embedded in her children, Debra, Peter and Shona, who have all worked in the business. Anita retired two years ago after working 50 years in the business.
In 2017, Anita, Jim and Peter sold 50% of the Dynes group to the HWR Group, where both business and family values were in line for the future of the company. The Dynes Group has depots throughout New Zealand. Along with their passion in being solution architects for the dairy, forestry and wine industries, they are incredibly proud of the amazing people who have worked with the family for more than 50 years to make what is today, an iconic company within New Zealand.