Fleet Focus

It’s a quarry, Jim, but not as we generally know it. OK, the stuff that comes out of a typical quarry might sometimes start out as solid rock, but by the time it has been processed the individual bits won’t be all that big.

Not so the output of the Wainihinihini quarry (20km inland from Kumara on SH73) operated by Greymouth-based MBD Contracting.

These are seriously big goolies, lumps of granite that weigh an average of five tonnes each – but for some specific applications like seaport protection walls they can go as high as 15-tonnes a stone! In that case they are carted on semi tipulators, and there have been times when a single rock has made up the whole... ... 

In 2005 when New Zealand Truck & Driver featured the distinctive white, blue and silver trucks of G.J. Sheldrake Ltd in the November issue Fleet Focus, company founder Graham Sheldrake was unsure if his son Mathew (Mat) would move into the Tokoroa-based family business.

Mat was 21 at the time and working as a fabricator-welder at Total Transport Engineering while Graham was keeping a fleet of eight loggers and five general freight trucks busy during one of the cyclical tougher times for the logging industry.

G.J. Sheldrake Ltd had just turned 25-years-old when that Fleet Focus feature was published. Almost two decades later, Graham is now retired f... ... 

In 2005 New Zealand Truck & Driver profiled a fleet that had the distinction of having been incorporated as a charitable trust.

Tinwald-based Wilson Bulk Transport had been set up in the 1960s by local farmer Trevor Wilson and his brother, primarily to handle bulk grain harvested by their agricultural contracting business from farms in the mid-Canterbury area.

After the partnership was dissolved in the late 1960s, Trevor carried on as sole owner, adding fertiliser spreading and stock cartage to the services he offered his rural clients. He was also deeply involved in community activities, and after being diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1990, he made the ... ...