Double Coin Imaging Awards

The metallic green and gold fleet colour scheme of Hawke's Bay operator Tomoana Warehousing, is the result of a totally fresh start – one forced by outside circumstance.

In 1998, Trevor Taylor was forced to wind up THT Roadfreight, the transport company with which he'd been servicing the region's horticulture industries.

The 24-unit strong THT had lost 90% of its turnover overnight when primary client Carter Holt Harvey adopted a new transport strategy.

Taylor's efforts were then directed to the Tomoana Warehousing operation he'd set up a few years previously. This grew so successfully that by the early 2000s it was obvious it could handle an inhouse transpo... ... 

It's a livery that keeps company branding to a bare minimum: No big, bold logo on the roof aerofoil. Ditto for the stock crates.

And yet in the area that G.K. Skou Transport concentrates on – primarily around the Manawatu, and most particularly around its base in Marton – its trucks are unmistakable.

That's thanks to their readily-identifiable bold colours – dark green, dramatically cut by bright red and yellow stripes.

Sure, the same colours also used to feature on the big Total Transport fleet just up the island at Taupo, company founder Graeme Skou acknowledges.

In fact, on the 1985 Mack Cruise-Liner classic he restored eight years ago,... ...