When it comes to signwriting, to say Mt Maunganui-based Truck Sign’s owner Cliff Mannington ‘has a gift’ is a huge understatement. Not only has his work been seen as far away as Europe, but with over three decades in the industry, there’s an estimated 3,000 trucks bearing his designs. Yet signing trucks still gives him butterflies – which is why he’s a Southpac legend.

Thanks in part to his father, Cliff is a self-confessed ‘truck nut from way back’, but he’s also ‘always been good at drawing’. 

“My dad had trucks when I was a little kid, so I just grew up around them, sort of live and breathe diesel. I wanted to be a truckie like my dad, but he said `na mate, you’re good at drawing, you should really go and do signwriting’,” says Cliff. 

Fast forward a couple of decades and Cliff says that he literally gets the best of both worlds, he gets to signwrite and do all his art, plus jump in and drive every truck there is. However, his career journey wasn’t quite clear cut.

Upon leaving school, Cliff went into the screen printing world, doing transfers for Town and Country surfwear (he was into surfing at that time), but was made redundant. While this was happening, his father was working for Mainfreight and purchased a new truck. He called Cliff and told him he was getting it signwritten ‘and did Cliff want to come and watch?’ 

Cliff recalls the day vividly. “So I went down to watch and this guy [Peter Phipps, Sign Time] said, ‘how about you jump up on the ladder and I’ll give you a paint brush’. So I started helping him, and he’s like, wow. He reckoned I had it straight away, so he gave me a job that day.”

Peter taught Cliff how to signwrite but after a few weeks, he told Cliff that he was wasting his time being a signwriter, that he should actually be a graphic artist. And although he enjoyed being a signwriter, Cliff evidently agreed.

Cliff recalls; “He ended up giving me an apprenticeship and I cleaned up at trade school, getting the highest score that they had ever had, and got Apprentice of the Year.”

Cliff worked for Peter for seven years and then decided he wanted to do his own thing. And at the age of only 23, he started up his own sign shop, initially doing sign work for Coke and DB breweries.

“It was all hand painted, there were no computers,” says Cliff. “When computers came along they made a big difference, but they could only do little lettering back then, so they only helped with the little stuff, like menu boards. So we kept hand painting walls and big signs for years and years.”

Although Cliff’s business started out doing everything, it wasn’t until the mid-90s that his focus turned back to trucks.

“Huck from Rowe Motors got me to start signwriting his trucks for him,” recalls Cliff.

“And there was another sign writer that sign wrote trucks called Tony Hill. He was the best sign writer in town back then, he used to ring me up and I’d go over to his workshop and help him out. That’s when I realised I wanted to start signwriting trucks again – that was around 2005.”

Cliff had a workshop in Tauranga when he first started signwriting trucks, but ran out of room pretty quickly. He then found a building at the Mount, and he got his dad to come with him to make sure that he could get his B-train truck and trailer in and out of the workshop. As it turned out, the forward-thinking entrepreneur had enough room to park about 20 trucks in his yard too.

Both Cliff’s business and reputation seemed to grow exponentially from there, with businesses trusting his (and his team’s) keen eye and flair.

“The amount of people that come in here and say they don’t know what they want, and can you just do what you do? They call it ‘work your magic’,” says Cliff proudly.

Cliff says he quizzes people about what they like and what they’ve seen on the internet, and then creates his magic from there.

“I can sort of virtually work out what sort of style signwriting that they like,” Cliff tries to explain. “I don’t even know how I do it, it just comes to me. It’s like the thing’s already signwritten in my head. I’ve always been like that.”

To get Cliff to name his best work is tough; “There’s been so many mate,” but it’s the ones he’s airbrushed that are the most memorable. 

“There was one that I did for Scotty from Southpac. I created a Morpheus on his K200 Kenworth, it was really cool.” 

Cliff continues: “On the way back from Wellington there was a truck that I signed for Johnny Burling. His truck came around the corner and it blew my mind, because I got to see what other people see. I’m like, holy shit, even I was proud of my work.”

Cliff’s work has even taken him overseas, with salesman Steve Herring from Southpac arranging to fly him to Melbourne to sign write Graham Redington’s Northchill Kenworth Legend.

“There’s a guy over there called Justin Klos that’s a real good sign writer as well. Graham teams us up together, and we’ve become quite good friends now,” Cliff says.

Nowadays Truck Signs puts out about 270 trucks a year, but Cliff still gets butterflies in his stomach when he sees something really cool that they produce. And as far as the industry and work is concerned, Cliff couldn’t be happier.

“The amount of friends that I’ve made is phenomenal,” says Cliff. “I always thought, man, I wonder if I’m ever gonna get bored of signwriting trucks, but if we’re doing 250 trucks a year, I must have signed 3000 trucks by now and I’m still getting out of bed and coming to work, and I’m still enjoying what I’m doing. I think if you enjoy what you do, then it’s half the battle won, isn’t it?”