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Reilly’s started during the 1930’s when the family and their business partners started and expanded towing operations from the Moray Place depot and their Great King Street building, under the company name of Reilly’s Central Parking. They offered parking, lube servicing and also hydraulic work (done by Len Scobie), along with breakdown and tow services.

One of the company’s first breakdown vehicles was a cut-down Studebaker Sedan – which once  had the honour of driving the Prince of Wales around Southland in 1920.

It was hard work in those days with every vehicle that was rescued by the Studebaker craned out by hand. It was eventually replaced by a new Fargo truck which had a power winch, but this was commandeered by the army in 1940 for military duties. Unbelievably the Fargo was recently found in Temuka and has now been recovered.

A partnership of Bob Henderson and Wolfgang Fechner took over the business in 1971 but only lasted 10 years before selling it to Gerald Shaw. Gerald purchased a Kenworth W923, which was an ex-logging truck, and modified it for heavy salvage. 

Ron Gilkison purchased Reilly’s in 1988 and continued to expand the fleet and purchased Reilly’s main opposition at the time, Wyllie’s.

In 1997 Ron sold the Heavy Salvage division to Brian Lilley (who had been with the company since 1988) and then in 2002, Brian, together with Ian Smaill and Phil Burrell, purchased the company. The latter two would be replaced by Rob Williams, who purchased the entire company when Brian retired in 2014.

Since then, the company has fine-tuned its services with the modern fleet that now contains over a dozen vehicles that can handle any size car or larger vehicle with the capacity to handle multiple jobs while operating 24/7 every day of the year. 

“When I started you were looking at towing weights up to 44 tonne but now it’s 65 tonne which is a huge step, and you need huge gear to tow it,” Rob says. 

The Mack was semi-retired and initially replaced by an imported ERF which was purchased from Nigel Stewart in Invercargill. A Freightliner Argosy then joined the fleet which had more capability to tow the heavier units. The Freightliner, which had been a stock truck, was fitted with a Ekebol lifting system from Australia along with toolboxes and a counterweight.

“When you see what we’ve done, we had no idea what we were doing and compared to the Scania a lot of the things are very similar,” Rob says.

“Coxy from Cox Heavy Salvage rung me up and offered us a Scania that he had coming into the country, as the intended buyer wasn’t coming to the party. In the end they took that truck, so we got the next one that was available.”

The 2023 Scania XT R650 V8 was a two-year build project for its original owner Cox Heavy Salvage consisting of an extremely well built Falkom B.V. FAW 18000 unit built in the Netherlands.

Factory fitted counterweights mounted at the front and middle (behind the cab above the second steer axle) are one of the reasons the Scania maintains legal steering weights when it lifts a loaded eight-wheeler to be towed. The fuel tank also assists by being strategically placed sitting above the middle counterweight.

The Scania, rated at 125, was then put to work by Cox Heavy Salvage servicing the lower North Island region before moving south to Reilly’s Towage and Salvage.

Rob’s son Brendan, who started with the company several years ago, had some time behind the wheel of the Scania before it joined their fleet.

“Coxy has done quite a bit with us. I went up to Wellington a couple of years ago and he gave us a run through on the Scania before we even looked at buying it. I worked with one of his employees for a couple of weeks and then again when I went to pick up the Scania I spent 10 days or so working,” Brendan says.

Rob says: “My theory is that if you don’t have the gear, you don’t get the work. Somebody will come along and take some work off you and then it’ll be a snowball effect and all of a sudden, you’ve got nothing. So, I’m trying to keep our work in our area.”

The Scania was wrapped in the Reilly’s livery by the team at Custom Signs in Dunedin and a competition was held through local radio station The Breeze to name the truck, with the name Tow-Tal Recall chosen as the winner.

Reilly’s are now set for the future with the new Scania set for “tow-tal” domination.