Double Coin Imaging Awards

Looking at older photos of Waimea Contract Carriers trucks and comparing them with their current counterparts offers a fascinating glimpse of how trucking fleet colour schemes evolve. 
The primary colours from more than 30 years ago remain: Teal green and yolk yellow over a base white….but the green has morphed from a flat finish to metallic, and the yellow now plays a less dominant role. 
And in the past decade, new colours have been added – charcoal/gunmetal, a silver that's almost chrome, a lighter teal, plus black keylines. It's a mixture that sounds like it could have ended up as a real dog's breakfast...yet it works. 
The latest additio... ... 

Longtime Wairarapa transport operator Fred Burling reckons it was quite simple – the process of coming up with Burling Transport's distinctive red, white and yellow livery.
It started out as just red and white – back when he started the company more than 50 years ago: "Oh, they were just the colours I wanted to use – so that was it." 
He'd bought the carrying side of the "Baileys topdressing outfit" in Masterton – taking over "about three" petrol-engined Commers. 
"They were grey, some of them." He had them repainted, with white cab roofs, white guards and front bumpers – and red in between.
When he bought out another Wairara... ... 

Canterbury and Otago drainlaying contractor Grant Wooster's first truck was a classic tradie's unit – a 10-year-old 4x2 Hino Ranger….painted white. With strictly-no-frills black signwriting.
When it came to buying that first truck, "I wasn't too worried about what it looked like really," he says now, with a chuckle.
"It was like, get some work first, you know." 
That was 13 years ago. Since then, the work has come – and with it has come a growing fleet of trucks. There's 11 of 'em now.
Along with the growth of the Dynamic Drainage truck fleet has also come an increasing interest in having them look good – starting about seven years ago... ... 

When it comes to truck colour schemes, Southland transport company boss Ross Richardson likes to keep things plain and simple.
He even happily reckons that what he's decided on for McNeill Distribution's new look is "quite a basic colour scheme…."
And that is, he quickly confirms, "the way we like it."
The managing director of Southland's Ken Richardson Group (KRG) – which has, in the past 15 years, developed a trucking operation into a major part of its business – had his first crack at simplifying the McNeill livery around 2005.
That was around the time when McNeill – until then a drilling operation, running its own specialist drilling ri... ...