Fleet Focus

There are no hard and fast rules, but typically a transport company that has been in business for just over 18 months won’t have the back story suitable for a New Zealand Truck & Driver Fleet Focus.

But Tauranga-based Nupin Transport, established in October 2021, isn’t really a new kid on the block. This is the story of a well-known brand name returning to the transport industry and a trucking background for owners Glen and Barry Raymond that began during their childhood.

The brothers grew up at the time when Keith Nicholson and their late father Colin Raymond owned Nupin Distributors. The company was well-known in the 1980s and early 1990s for its predominan... ... 

SO’s fleet of fluorescent green trucks stand out like a beacon and the firm’s profile at New Zealand log export ports is equally prominent.

Trucking is one of many cogs in the machine of ISO’s operations in New Zealand, which handles around 60 per cent of New Zealand’s export log trade. It loads over 500 log vessels a year, around 11 vessels a week. While logs — more than 25 million of them a year — feature prominently, ISO also handles a large portion of New Zealand’s kiwifruit exports, around 25% of the country’s pulp exports as well as container, breakbulk and all manner of other import and export operations.

ISO was founded in 1995 as a stevedoring company, which funda... ... 

It’s almost a truism of any business – not just trucking fleets – that continued growth is not only important...but vital for survival.

So it’s refreshing to come across a medium-sized fleet whose owner figures the 10 trucks currently on the register feels pretty right….thankyou.

Wayne Burnell, of Christchurch’s Burnell & Son Transport, obviously marches to the beat of a different drum. 

Take the company name, as a minor but telling example: Did Wayne inherit the business from his father, or maybe even a grandfather? He laughs: “When we (he and wife Kathy) started up in 2000 our first child, Jacob, had just been born – so the name is a bit tongue in cheek.”