Fleet Focus

When now major-league North Island logtruck company Aztec started up, there were some in the industry who didn’t give it much hope.

The thing is, the three drivers who created Aztec Forestry Transport Developments were not exactly in a big way back in 1997: Between them, Peter Phillips, Ken Angus and Steve Segetin owned just four trucks.

They were modest owner-operators….rather than bigtime operators.

But – apparently to the annoyance of others in the industry – these guys together had something that timber manufacturing supplier (and then forest owner) Carter Holt Harvey liked…

And so it made the three-way partnership one of an exclusive group – given the stat... ... 

When Auckland towtruck business owner Evan Watson died 11 years ago, for wife Pam things could hardly have been worse.

In two harrowing years she’d seen him slowly, inexorably lose his battle with cancer.

Now she was facing, alone, the fight of her life – forced to push aside her grief and focus everything on saving their business.

It demanded the 47-year-old step up from her past role looking after the admin side of Southern Districts Towing, to fully take over running the whole show.

The challenges of being a woman boss in the male-dominated towing industry scarcely rated – not compared to what else she was confronted with.

The rent on SDT’s sprawling M... ...