Teletrac Navman Fleet Focus

Loggers, Gods and soldiers are awake early to get the day started.

Which begins the explanation for why New Zealand Truck & Driver is waiting in the carpark of the Pan Pac mill, just north of Napier, at 3.30am on a chilly Monday.

We’re meeting Platoon Sergeant Storm Harrison from the 5/7 Battalion NZ Infantry Regiment Army Reserve. And his two stand-out log trucks named Tāne Mahuta [God of the Forest] and Tūmatauenga [God of War].

The military and logging trucks have been dual career paths for Napier-based Storm. And it’s a combination he continues to be busy with approaching 26 years of service with the NZ Army.

Storm has made the early star... ... 

In a paddock behind the Borlase Transport yard at Wakefield is the small machine that started it all for Duncan Borlase.

The 41 trucks in the Borlase Transport fleet now working in the Nelson region forests are the result of a casual conversation which drew 17-year-old Duncan into forestry work in early 1977. Pretty good timing as it turns out with work in the Nelson forests beginning to ramp up during the 1980s.

“We got into forestry a little bit by accident,” says Duncan.

“I came from a farming background and my brother still has the farm up at Lake Rotoiti.

“We had a little CAT 922B wheel loader with a bucket on it. One of the forest manage... ... 

Lots of people who love trucks reckon they were “born in a truck.” 

In 25 years of writing about trucks and truckies, I’ve never once struck someone who really did arrive here on a truck seat!

But in Dave Smith’s case, the actual, solid-gold truth – not a mere figure of speech – is that he’s been spending quality time in trucks since he was a newborn baby.

The third-generation owner of the modest Smiths Transport in Port Albert (a tiny settlement about eight kilometres west of Wellsford) spent his first full day in a truck when he was just three weeks old!

And by the time he was a toddler, Dave (along with baby sister Helena) routinely we... ...