Double Coin Imaging Awards

Payment for consulting on and deciding which one of a few options for the colour scheme on KTL Transport’s new Kenworth K200 was unusual, to say the least.

What it came down to was this: The very first trip for the brand-new vivid red logger, with its eyecatching shaded silver and grey stripes, pinstriping and scrollwork, was a school run – delivering Ollie and Maggie Karangaroa to their Napier school!

How come? Simple, as company co-owner Kent Karangaroa explains: His kids – Maggie, five, and eight-year-old Ollie – were the ones who made the final decision, along with his wife (and business partner) Kirsty.

Dean Evenson from Sign It Up, Napier, who has done the company’s signage and artwork since KTL started up in business six years ago, had come up with variations of the company’s existing red and silver colours to suit its first Kenworth, which is this month’s NZ Transport Imaging Awards feature truck.

The company’s trucks have, until now, been DAFs, a Hino and an Isuzu. Always red – simply because “they’d look good on the road,” says Kent.

“I wasn’t particularly fond of the colour or anything, but I saw other red trucks on the road and thought ‘oh yeah, you can see them coming!’ ”

It was agreed that the Kenworth needed something different in the striping though than that on the four DAFs in the current KTL lineup.

Kent’s only stipulation was that he didn’t want the KTL logo on the front of the KW – neither on the body (as it is on the DAFs), nor the sunvisor (which is red).

But so far as the striping went, he says: “I kept my nose out of that. That was the kids and my wife. 

“Dean came up with three ideas, we printed them off and put them on the wall at home. And then the wife and kids had a bit of a vote – and picked out the best one. They changed it a little bit….and that’s what we’ve come up with. 

“And it was Kirsty who also insisted that the front bumper should be red. I love the bumper – it looks bloody grouse, I reckon.”

So the three of them can, as he happily points out, “take all the credit for how good it looks.”

Which, by the way, he rates as “awesome. I’m rapt – it’s fantastic.”

It’s an opinion shared by many other people, passed on to him in the rash of complimentary phone calls and messages he’s had in the weeks since the Kenworth went on the road.

How about Ollie and Maggie? “Oh they were stoked.” Especially when he drove them to school in it – “so they could show their mates.”

Kent is also appreciative of the effort put in by signwriter Dean Evenson – who puts a lot of fine detail into the design, including “about three different shades in the stripes. And the arrow is to symbolise moving forward, he reckons.”

“And then he’s put a little flick on them.”

Kent says that Patchell, which built the five-axle log trailer and the KW’s log gear, also contributed to the unit’s stunning looks – matching the Kenworth’s red on the bolsters and the truck’s tanks, and keeping with the red and silver imaging with the silver/grey trailer chassis.

Patchell also did a last-minute change of the truck’s mudguards, which were black. The family went to look at the unit at the trailer manufacturer’s shop when it was almost finished: “We said ‘oh, grey guards would look really cool….so they swapped them out at the last minute and I’m rapt with that – they look way better.”

The arrival of the Kenworth marks a new area of business for KTL, which has until now been devoted to running bulk tippers to service Aerospread’s aerial topdressing operations around Hawke’s Bay.

Karangaroa manages both Aerospread and KTL, which now has four DAF CF bulk truck and trailer units.

The entry into log transport – with this and an identical second K200 due on the road within a few months, both carting logs to Napier Port for Harvest Logistics – is intended to give KTL drivers year-round work, he explains.

“The bulk work really dies off in the winter – and the logs go all the year round, constant. 

“So the log truck drivers can have a bit of time off, and the bulk truck drivers can drive the loggers. That’s essentially why we did it.”

Two of the DAFs also have a strong presence on the road, with spectacular pictures of Aerospread topdressing operations covering the sides of their truck and trailer bins. These too were done by Sign It Up.

Kent Karangaroa says having a good-looking livery is “all about having a truck that you are proud of, that represents your brand and your values and stands out amongst the crowd.”

And he’s very happy that the new Kenworth does all of that.

His only complaint is that he reckons the K200’s driver, Ryan Newsome, “won’t let me in it – except to move it when I wash it on the weekends!”