It’s been said that ‘dreams are for those that sleep’. Martinborough Transport’s founder Trevor Hawkins would beg to differ. Not only did Trevor set his sights on owning a transport company but his hard work and diligence is proof that dreams can in fact become a reality. It’s for that reason (plus a few others), that Trevor is this month’s Southpac Legend.

“It was always my dream as a young kid to get into trucking,” says Trevor and this goal grew to owning one of the region’s biggest transport companies at that time, Martinborough Freighters. Ultimately Trevor managed to achieve both objectives, but his success certainly didn’t happen overnight.

“I left school when I was 14 and worked with my dad, doing shearing and fencing. But right behind us they used to do the shed crates from McCarthy Brothers Transport, like I said, I always wanted to be a truck driver.”

Virtually as soon as he was able, Trevor went to work for Martinborough Freighters, he was about 18-years old at that point and says that Mac Carter gave him a start. He started off doing hay and then moved on to driving trucks, before eventually (after he got married at 22-years old) doing a lot of the running of the place.

“I knew all the cockys, I had a lot of friends and good drivers.”

Trevor recalls that back then in Martinborough there used to be about six transport companies. As time moved on, five of them joined up as one to become Martinborough Freighters (subsequently McLeod and Garrity’s) while Days Transport stayed on their own.

“Then Days Transport did a deal to buy up Martinborough Freighters,” says Trevor, adding “the

sale came as a bit of a surprise.

“I was loading up at the sale yards one Sunday and a guy called Mike Wiley came up to me and said, ‘I heard Days has bought Martinborough, you’d better go buy a truck and a licence and start up on your own.’ So that’s what I did.”

In all honesty, Trevor says that period of his life was a bit of a blur as things moved pretty fast.

“I married Carol in 1976 and in 1979 we moved into our new house. We were married for a couple of years, had three kids and then I went out on my own.” He was still only 25 years old!

Trevor’s first truck was a 210hp Cummins powered Ford D1000 tipper he bought from a farmer.

“He had a licence and a truck that he bought in the early years, but he didn’t use it, he couldn’t get the work. So, I went to see him, and he agreed to sell it.”

And just like that (around 1980) TJ Hawkins Transport began, although Trevor says that he and the business actually had a lot of names back then, “because all my friends used to call me Hori Hawkins Heavy Haulage 4H, which was a bit cheeky.”

Trevor’s first job was a load of sheep, and he also carted a lot of stock and wool. But one of the biggest jobs he had at that time was carting potatoes to the market.

He’d cart stock all day, then metal. Then take the crates off and load up bags of potatoes at a local farm, Mahaki. “I’d take them to the market at 5am, unload them and come back and put the crate back on.

“The spuds were a good job. It was hard work because you had to load them all by hand off pallets, stack them up on your truck and take them to the market. You’d have four or five guys with barrows, and they’d come on and you’d load them up. It was backbreaking stuff. But I’d be back in Martinborough by 6.30-7am to cart stock all day, then metal.”

To many, this ‘dream’ sounded more like a nightmare but that was exactly what he wanted to do, and he’d already been doing a lot of this work at Martinborough Freighters.

Trevor says that the business soon outgrew the small Ford and 2-axle trailer he borrowed from farmer John Donald.

“It carted bugger all. One of my other first jobs was carting 60 cattle beasts and that was a massive job for such a little truck. So, I knew I had to go bigger, it was just a matter of getting the timing right.”

The ‘timing’ it would appear was only a couple of months later, when Trevor sold his Falcon and (along with a loan) bought a brand new 310hp Mitsubishi tipper and added a 3-axle trailer from Total Transport.

“We were into it. That Mitsubishi didn’t stay long with me, 18 months later I sold that and bought a 400 International. Initially I got a small loan off Māori affairs to get started, but UDC were the main ones, they had a lot of confidence in what we were doing.”

The confidence was evidently validated as two or three years down the track Trevor had too much work on and added a little 6-wheeler, long nose 1418 Mercedes to the business.

“That did a lot of the wool and carted super. My brother-in-law, Aaron Hartnell drove that. I had that for a little while and then bought another International.

“Family has always played a big part in the business and there have been several brothers and nephews who have worked for us over the years. Even the sisters have gotten on board.”

One of Trevor’s most memorable stories was a Christmas Eve in the early `nineties when there was hay which had to be moved from a farmer’s paddock. 

“I had told all the drivers to finish and go home and enjoy their Christmas break. But there was still the hay job to do. Our brothers and sisters were on deck as were our children. The kids drove the rigs around the paddocks and the rest of us were loading the hay bales. Around 1.00am Christmas morning we drove the loaded trucks around the square and back to the yard. We were tired but we had a real fun time working as a team.”

As Trevor’s business continued to expand, another carrier, McLeod and Garrity, that had bought a licence off Martinborough Freighters, offered Trevor a shareholding in their business, so he bought 51%.

“They had four trucks [Isuzus] and a spreader, and I used to like spreading. They were bigger than me, but I had a lot more work than them.”

In purchasing the McLeod and Garrity business, virtually all Trevor’s original dreams were fulfilled.

“I said to my wife Carol that I had a dream about owning Martinborough Freighters, but it went the long way around. I bought a licence and Martinborough Freighters were sold to the competition, then opposition sold out to another outfit (Robbie Robertson/Days Transport).

“McLeod and Garrity bought a licence off Martinborough Freighters plus their yard, so buying 51% meant that I could move back into the yard where I used to work. So, it all worked out fine, part of my dream came true.”

Moving the operations to 47 Jellicoe Street certainly made life easier for both Trevor and Carol.

“In the early days the business operated from the new home we had built. We were able to purchase another two, quarter acre sections next door to accommodate the growing fleet and we began building a shed shortly before the McLeod and Garrity purchase, which we later dismantled and sold.”

Along with the takeover of McLeod and Garrity’s and the move into the yard, Trevor also changed the business name to Martinborough Transport in 1987. From there the business grew to about 15-16 trucks and they bought out Day’s Transport.

“That was 2002. So, then there was just one carrier in Martinborough. People can be negative about there being just one carrier, but if you do the job right, you’re not going to have any problems.”

During this time Trevor was also trying to get his sons to work for him. Daniel the older was a mechanic in the Army, the middle one Josh was at university, and all the youngest Jared wanted to do was drive trucks and play rugby, ‘so he was easy’. (He also has a daughter, Carlene who lives in Australia). Over time all three boys came on board and the fleet began to change.

“Once I got it established and started getting more and more new trucks, we had some Hinos, a couple of Freightliners, a few Volvos, and some DAFs. Plus, there were a few Kenworths with the owner drivers. It was a mixed fleet.”

Trevor recounts a funny story about the DAFs, he says that at one point around 2008 his son Jared (a devout Kenworth fan) kept pestering Trevor to get him a Kenworth. Trevor finally caved and traded one of the older DAFs for one.

“Then [a short while later] Southpac’s agent ‘the white shark’ called and asked if I wanted to buy it back, I said yep bloody oath. I was so happy because I still had the crates for it, and I flew up to Auckland the next day to get it.”

On Trevor’s 40 years anniversary his boys bought him a brand-new Scania, one of the highest horsepower Scania’s in NZ.

“40-years in business was written on one door and on the back of the cab it had Hori Hawkins Heavy Haulage,” Trevor laughs.

With the business running smoothly, Trevor decided to change things up again.

“I woke up one morning in 2009 and said to Carol, ‘the boys are taking over the business at the beginning of next month.’

So, I went to work that morning and told them. They said what?

Then the first of next month came and I said ‘see ya’.”

`See ya’ is a relative term though as 68-year-old Trevor is still around, driving the trucks and the spreader, “but I mainly like my diggers and I’m still doing that.” He also made a trip up to Holland in 2015 to have a look at the DAF plant.

All three of Trevor’s boys have their part in running the business now. Jared runs dispatch, Josh is more the administrator. “He does all the legal stuff and accounts. He’s switched on that way and Daniel is a really good mechanic.

“They’re all hard workers, doing the hours in the truck if the drivers are sick. And they get on together too. I’m super proud of them, I think they’ve got around 35 trucks now.”

On the whole Trevor believes that the rough times have been minimal, just getting drivers and workers has been one of the hardest things.

“I had problems with that, and the boys still are,” he says.

Conversely, the highlights have been plenty, and he has a couple of guys to thank for that.

“Mike Wiley still supports me today, even though he’s retired. I tell Mike that if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. The other guy is Mac Carter. He was running Martinborough Freighters and he was the one that hired me originally. And when they were sold to Days, he told me to carry on what I was doing, and it would be good. In the end he came and worked for me. He’s passed away now but he was a great figure for me to look up to.”

“I hate going into the office, I don’t like the office stuff, getting out of there was great. I like being out there.”

With his original goals well and truly covered, Trevor’s new dream is to retire, but says the phone keeps ringing with people wanting a job done with the digger and he still does stuff for the school for no charge, ‘just to help out’.

“I’ve got my own truck that I cart metal around in, and I do some spreading when it gets busy. It’s marvellous because you get to different farms every day and see different farmlands. That’s something that tickles my fancy, getting around and seeing the different places.”

Although he is happy behind the wheel of something, Trevor says that he also spends a lot of time at Ngawi [out by the lighthouse]. He and Carol have a property there where he ‘builds stuff’ and maybe does a bit of golf - a retirement dream we can all buy into.