26 minute read
Teletrac Navman Fleet Focus
Story Dave McLeod, Wayne Munro Photos Gerald Shacklock
Two-year-old Kenworth K200 Madax, is named for Daniel Mateni’s kids, Madison and Jax
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Daniel’s love of trucks and trucking was inspired at a young age by his Grandad Jim – a legend of the New Zealand trucking industry
TO THE NEW ZEALAND TRUCKING INDUSTRY,
Jim Barker was an icon, a legend, pioneer, a visionary…and a larger-than-life character. To truckie Daniel Mateni he was all of that….and much, much more. He was his beloved Grandad Jim. The founder and inspirational leader of Freight Lines, Bulk Lines, Stock Lines, plus Strait Shipping and Bluebridge Ferries, was Daniel’s role model, hero, mentor and confidant.
And when Big Jim died back in 2016, Daniel – encouraged and supported by his grandfather – had just achieved the dream of buying his first truck.
He was devastated: “Jim’s death was a big hit for me. I’d only just started going….but I was ready to give up right then and there.
“In so many ways, the confidence in going out on my own was knowing that he would be there. Then (when he died) it was ‘what am I going to do?’ ”
That the grieving Daniel didn’t quit on his newly-created Main Road transport business was also down to Big Jim. His Grandad, Daniel says, had heaps of colourful sayings: “The biggest one for me was ‘cowboys don’t cry.’
“You’d be busy and stressed out – yelling and screaming about things – and Jim would say: ‘Cowboys don’t cry – just get on with it. Crying ain’t gonna get you nowhere.’ ”
So, after his death, his grandson got his act together – and just got on with it. His feelings showed with the picture of his Grandad airbrushed onto the back of the cab on his Kenworth K104 – that first truck – along with those words: “Cowboys don’t cry.”
You might think that being Jim Barker’s grandson would, for sure, mean that Daniel was always going to be involved in the “family business.”
And that was certainly how he started out in his working life. But for the past handful of years he’s been intent on stepping outside that seemingly comfortable possibility….and creating something of his own.
Not that the 40-year-old, whose Main Road Limited company is now six years old, is claiming to have done it all by himself. Far from it.
“I’m definitely under no illusion that I’ve done this on my own – it’s been the people around me, with me and sometimes against me that has kept me going and got me to where I want to be essentially.”
He’s done it with the help of the huge business that Jim Barker created and many people in it – running his own small business alongside it....and with its help.
It has gone beyond close family – like Grandad Jim and Nana Bev, his Mum Sheryl (Ellison) and Uncle Peter (Barker) – to individual drivers like David (Stretch) O’Sullivan, Lance Crosland and Mathew Cribb, to good mates who have come to his aid….
Thanks even to the help he’s had from other transport operators, like the Porter Group, Barry Satherley and PTS owner Scott Miers.
And he’s done it mostly because of Grandad Jim’s huge
Main picture: K200 tractor unit, Koro, was Main Road’s first brand-new truck, bought in 2017 Top, from left to right: Daniel’s grandparents, Jim and Bev Barker...latest addition to the fleet is this old International 7600 tractor unit, used for local work around the southern Waikato, particularly on curtainsiders.... Daniels’ tribute to his Grandad, on the back of his first truck, a K104 Kenworth
influence on his life – as far back as he can remember...back to when he was a little boy.
He reckons his childhood was spent “all over the place” – he and his Mum and Dad (Sheryl and Timmy Mateni) moving around a lot.
“And they didn’t have anything to do with trucking or transport. Dad was an aerial installer and a lawnmowing contractor, while Mum was a schoolteacher.” (Sheryl would though, go on to become the managing director of Strait Shipping, after Jim’s frustration with dealing with the Railways’ unreliability and uncaring attitude led to him starting up his own Cook Strait ferry service).
There was though a constant – his grandparents, Jim and Bev, in Otorohanga – and Jim’s world of trucks and trucking. It was where Jim and Bev, his sister Cynthia and brother-in-law Dennis Dow had started out – forming Otorohanga Transport, in 1963.
Daniel reckons “I always spent a lot of time with them: School holidays – and I stayed with them on and off.”
And it soon evolved that trucks and trucking “was all I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. To me Otorohanga (with Bev and Jim) was home.
“I think Grandad Jim was the motivation: I always wanted to be around him and see what he was doing. But I liked being
around all the truck drivers too: Sale day was Wednesday in Otorohanga so I’d be hanging out there.”
He’d entertain himself “washing trucks or basically kicking stones around. They taught me how to grease trucks when I was about 10 years old and that was me. Uncle Pete (Peter Barker) drove, so I went with him and Cribby (Mathew Cribb).”
This went on for years: “Even as a teenager – right through. I’d be living with them (Bev and Jim) and annoying all the truck drivers to take me for a ride. Cribby was a hero for me growing up, but he was a bit naughty so I wasn’t allowed to go with him all the time – and so I had to go with Arlo (Mark Dew).”
There are many special memories – like for instance: “Grandad actually pulled me out of school for two weeks when I was about nine, to take me down to the South Island. We took forever to get down there, on a tiki tour – and I got to watch him on the brick phone talking to people along the way.”
At the Clyde Dam he watched as a couple of big silos Jim had bought for lime storage at calcium carbonate producer Omya’s Te Kuiti plant, were broken down and loaded onto transporters. Then he rode home in one of the trucks, travelling in a convoy with pilot escorts: “It was really cool.”
On leaving school Daniel worked in the Christchurch yard of
Above left: The late Jim Barker, at his desk back in 2001 Above right: Main Road’s K104 and one of its K200s turned heads and won the People’s Choice award at the Mangatainoka truck show
Freight Lines as a forklift operator for about a year – and then moved to Auckland and worked at the company’s depot there until he turned 18, when he moved down to Otorohanga, and got his heavy traffic (HT) licence.
“I’d like to say that was self-driven (rather than an opportunity offered and organised by his Grandad): I wanted to be a bigtime trucker for as long as I can remember.”
Of course, Freight Lines made it possible – and gave him a job straight off – driving a little four-wheeler Nissan Diesel (“the Datsun,” he calls it), doing local runaround work.
For the next 15 years or so he drove for Freight Lines (or Bulk Lines): “Once I got my trailer licence I was off to Wellington.” He progressed through the likes of a 113 Scania, a Volvo 460 FH12….eventually getting a brand-new Kenworth K104.
Around 2014, he had a change of direction – turning to heavy-haulage pilot duties, working for both Freight Lines and the Porter Group. In return he helped out with the dispatching of the Porters trucks…
And then, with the support of his Grandad and Uncle Peter, he got into driver training. That, he says, was another notch in his belt: “It’s all been notches,” he adds, summing-up his working life: “I wanted to get into training because I wanted to learn more about that aspect of it – how they were getting licences, how they were training people. Piloting I just liked doing and because I wanted to learn about heavy haulage.”
The biggest notches in his belt – the biggest learnings – had always come via Jim: “If I’d done something wrong, he’d ring up and say ‘we’re going for a drive’ – and everyone knew what that meant!
“Grandad was always out and about, travelling around. So sometimes he’d ring out of the blue and say ‘get out of bed – we’re going to the sales.’ If it was a close one I’d get to go and watch what’s going on.
“Grandad was like my idol in every facet: As a father, grandfather, a boss….drinking legend. The biggest thing for me was his interaction with people, in every situation – his ability to talk people down. You’d get a truck driver spinning out, all red…and Grandad was just calm and collected and able to resolve situations. He could just get on with people everywhere we went.”
And Daniel reckons with a laugh: “Sometimes I think the only thing I got off him is that my hair’s falling out and I have a beer gut! But I have got his calm composure. Well, about 90% of the time – I haven’t quite reached 100. If you’d have asked me that yesterday, you’d have got a different answer.”
However, Daniel does say that Jim didn’t always get it right with his advice: “He used to always say: ‘Take the job on and work out how you’re gonna do it later.’ But, oh my God, that’s bitten me in the arse many times!
“I look back now and I wish I’d asked him more questions. Even now, every decision I go to make I think: ‘What would he have done?’ Or, ‘I just wish he’d give me a little bit of guidance here.’ But in saying that, I still go to my grandmother, ‘cos she clearly knows everything that’s going on.”
The decision to stand a little bit apart from the family business is also down to Jim, he reckons: “When I was growing up – and even in Grandad’s latter years – he was always big on standing on your own two feet.
“I would bitch and moan about certain things within the company and he’d say ‘well you’re not in the position to do anything about it until you go out on your own’. I don’t know if it was me wanting things my way, but I wanted to take control of my own destiny as such.”
So Daniel could “upskill – put another notch in the belt” – in 2015 he signed-up with the Bay of Plenty Polytech to become a commercial driver training tutor, running an 18-week course in Otorohanga.
The followup to that was the creation of Main Road Training – owned by Jim, Peter Barker and Daniel – under the Freight Lines umbrella: “The driver shortage was the reason we
started Main Road Training – to sort of educate us on how we were going to get more drivers through.”
Then, as Daniel recounts, “that grew. Then I got a truck (the K104 Kenworth) – and that grew. And I came to a decision that I needed to focus 100% on one side or the other – because I was only doing 50 and 50.
“The trucks have always been my passion….so that’s the direction I decided to take.”
It was Jim, says Daniel, who encouraged him to go into business, “I’d ummed and aahed but he just said to ‘stand on your own two feet. If you want something to change you’ve got to do something about it.’
“He told me: ‘Look, I’ll help you into this truck – but you’ll have to go out and buy a trailer. Because if you owe money on the trailer you’re gonna keep that truck working, ‘cos I’m not gonna help you out.’ ”
He duly bought the 2006 Kenworth 8x4 flatdeck off Freight Lines, “thanks to Grandad – and luckily I got the driver (Stretch) with it. I called Freight Lines’ dispatcher/manager Simon (Coyle) and said: ‘I can’t steal the driver with that truck can I?’ And he was like: ‘I think he’ll go with it anyway.’ ”
He and the Kenworth – nicknamed Cribb, in honour of Mathew Cribb (who these days drives for Bulk Lines), who he’d done so many trips with as a kid – initially went to work mostly for the Porter Group, moving machinery around: “Like I say, there are people that have helped me along the way. The Porter family are just amazing to be around and work with. They helped me to get on my feet to start off with. I was running my truck and all the Porters’ trucks.”
After Grandad Jim’s death in late 2016 – and Daniel
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Volvo FH 750 was added to the fleet last year – the choice of a Volvo rather than a Kenworth only made because it was longtime driver Terry White’s preference. It has, Daniel concedes, proven to be a good choice
eventually coming to terms with it, via his “cowboys don’t cry” resolution, he settled down into doing what his Grandad would have wanted him to do.
He counts himself blessed to have had a really good driver, in the form of Stretch, to help him get through it: “Stretch was absolutely amazing.”
With his support, in 2017 Daniel took another big step – buying a new Kenworth K200 when an opportunity arose: “I was a bit reluctant at first – I knew I had enough work for one and a half trucks! And the accountant said I’d be really pushing it. But I could just picture Grandad saying: ‘If you build it, they will come.’
“He actually said to me that it’s good to owe money because it keeps you going to work – and I definitely succeeded in owing money!”
By the time the K200, named Koro in honour of his father, was ready to go on the road “I was running out of work…. there was a bit of panic stations. It was a huge step.
“That’s when the Porter Group and B.R. Satherley offered work and advice – so both trucks were delivering machinery.
“I was running their trucks and mine. I remember at one point I was driving my cousin’s stock trucks too…..from the driver’s seat.”
In 2020, a decision to buy a second (near-new) K200 was made, when Main Road’s core business started growing.
But Madax (named after his children Madison and Jax), really “started out from just helping out a mate.”
Fellow Waikato operator Troy Slater had bought it, Daniel explains, then fell short of work for it – “so I said ‘I’ll run your truck for you so we can keep the payments up.’ In the end I said ‘look, I’m just gonna have to buy this off you because it’s a f***ing good truck.’ So we did that.
“That was one of the best decisions I’ve made so far ‘cos from there the dropsider work has just taken off. It does bulk fert and timber – that thing can do everything.”
Since then the Main Road business has continued to grow – prompting the purchase of a new Volvo FH 750 last year and the order for a new Kenworth T610, due on the road in the next month or so.
The Volvo (named Odin simply because, says Daniel, he’d been watching “too many Viking shows on Netflix,” has joined Madax on bulk linehaul work.
The decision to buy a Volvo rather than a Kenworth was, he says, “really out of left field. I talked to my longterm driver Terry (White) and asked him what he wanted. He said he quite liked the Volvos. I wasn’t keen at first, but the price was right.” It has, he adds, “been an amazing truck.”
On a personal level there have recently been more testing times for Daniel: His father and a best friend both died in the same week.
But, true to Jim’s “Cowboys don’t cry” credo, Daniel has carried on, and Main Road has continued to grow – the
Above left: When Daniel was about nine, his grandparents (Jim on the left, with Bev partially obscured behind him, and Jim’s mother Hannah Barker beside Daniel) took him out of school for a couple of weeks for a South Island “tiki tour.” Here they are crossing the Cook Strait – a couple of years before Jim started Strait Shipping to break the Railways’ Strait monopoly Above right: Daniel’s somewhere in the crowd gathered around Jim Barker to celebrate 50 years of Otorohanga Transport/ Freight Lines, in 2013 Left: After driving for the family business for many years, Daniel worked as an over-dimension load pilot for a time
modest fleet now up to five trucks, with the recent purchase of an old CAT C12-engined International 7600 6x4 tractor unit he bought off Bulk Lines.
“We added little Ngeru – which is Maori for cat… It was one of the first B-trains I ever drove and now, 12 years later, I’ve bought it. It’s a curtainsider B-train for local work…does timber deliveries around here. I call it our Uber, because it sits out the back and does last-minute work.”
Carting timber is an important part of Main Road’s business – along with bulk tipper work: “We work closely with Bulk Lines here. At the moment it’s fert season so most of the time the sides (on the dropsiders) stay up – but I’m able to fill the gaps with timber loads from the likes of (logistics solutions provider) Netlogix and Max Birt Sawmills.
“The beauty of Otorohanga is that everything is right here – it’s quite a hub when you look at what goes in and out for us. It’s all growing at the moment. It’s good when everything gels together.”
And now he’s impatiently awaiting the arrival of what he reckons will be his last new truck – a sleeper cab Kenworth T610 6x4 tractor unit: “It was going to be here in four weeks….six weeks ago! If it’s not the stainless guy it’s the signwriter. If not the signwriter….it’s shipping. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt it is to not think about it – just carry on and it’ll eventually turn up.”
He explains the need for the truck – and specifically a sleeper cab: “After jumping into Koro I came to the realisation that every truck needs a bed and a fridge.”
It’s a curtainsider, despite Daniel’s former feelings: “Something I said I’d never do is buy a curtainsider! But the volumes are there – too much for the Uber.”
As for the colour scheme chosen for Main Road, Daniel says that having grown up with the green of Freight Lines and Bulk Lines all around, his trucks “had to be green.
“But I wanted a different shade – and sparkly. The lines on the Cribb when we got it were to match Sugar Shack, which was Cribby’s truck. They are all there or thereabouts in design.
“Over time I got talking to Cliffy at Truck Signs and he came up with a few new designs, but they’re all based on the same theme.”
Looking ahead to Main Road’s future, Daniel says there are no plans to make his operation part of Bulk Lines, despite his close family connections. And despite the fact his company works out of the Bulk Lines office.
He explains: “I see us as part of the family – not the Group as such. I like to think that everyone has gone their separate ways: Mum and Pete are the directors in Bulk Lines; Abby and Aunty Maree are in Stock Lines….while cousins Rodney and Carolyn are at Otorohanga Transport.
“I just want to stay in my own little corner. Once that new truck is here, that’s how I want to keep it – that’s as big as I’m wanting to go. I feel like I’m where I want to be and I’m too tight to pay for a transport manager!”
He does admit that he was going to stop at three trucks and then four – and now it’s at five and soon to be six. But at that level, he feels it’s manageable.
“I’d like to keep the same staff I’ve got and keep the wheels turning. The size we’ve got it at now, we’ve still got the personal touch – we’re all one big family.” He believes that a business the size that Freight Lines became inevitably loses some of that personal touch and culture.
“I look at the old days of Otorohanga Transport – where everyone was together, we were really close-knit. I think where we’re at now we can still maintain a good culture and a good family atmosphere.”
His role model in this regard is his Grandad: “I’m still thinking about the old days down here and what he was able to do. The way everyone got on. That’s where they wanted to be – everyone was happy in their job. That’s what it looked like to me.”
The personal touches like Jim suggesting “going for a ride,”
Clockwise, from top left: Daniel with Big Jim – the Volvo FH 750 bought to mark Jim’s 50 years in trucking.....four-fifths of the current Main Road fleet....one of Daniel’s favourite things to do as a kid was to ride in this Otorohanga Transport Kenworth K144 with hero Mathew Cribb. No, that’s not Daniel in the passenger seat – it’s another young guy getting hooked on trucking: Darren Rennie became a driver, is now a dispatcher with Bulk Lines.....some of the extended Barker clan surround Bev and Jim at the 50th anniversary celebrations. Daniel is second from the left....Koro was named for Daniel’s late father, Timmy....Cribb initially went to work shifting machinery and equipment
when he wanted to have a talk about something you’d done.
Now, he reveals, “I do that with my staff: I say ‘I’ll pick you up and we’re going for a ride.’ But it’s more about that positive communication – I’m not into letter writing or written warnings, I usually find a good conversation will clear the air. And that’s what I’m saying about small businesses opposed to big businesses….the personal touch.”
He is at pains to also point out that he does lean on family – and the family business:
“Bulk Lines are amazing. They can hear me in here sometimes, pulling my hair out – and they offer up drivers to help out. And Brooke (Walters), who does the office stuff, she also works for Stock Lines.
“With the last truck purchase, I was ringing Pete (Barker) up and asking him his opinion… And then I’ll get a phone call from Jon Kyle, CEO of Bulk Lines, and he’ll have his input too.
“And that goes back to me having no illusions that I’ve done this on my own: There’s just so many people that I can call upon.”
He says that since he started Main Road, his help has come from many and varied (and sometimes unexpected) directions: Back in the early days – “at an ‘oh what am I going to do’ point” – a chance encounter with PTS owner Scott Miers at a NZ Heavy Haulage Association conference, led to Miers giving him work.
“Also, there was a gap when my driver Stretch left and a big group of my mates jumped in for a week at a time.
“That’s why I’m happy where I am now….The personal touch fills my cup – everyone looks after everyone is how it feels.”
He says that his Grandad Jim’s legacy includes that firsthand involvement, plus a strong sense of family and helping the community – all things he aspires to copy: “I always admired the way his staff would talk about him. Even to this day it’s always positive things that you hear.”
He’s happy with the core customer base that Main Road has now – and, like his Grandfather, sees looking after them as his main business focus.
“Grandad was always travelling around. Even when I was driving he’d just turn up in places like Feilding. He’d ring my dispatcher up and say I’m going with him and that was it. He’d grab my bag and hop in the car and we’d go and visit customers.
“He’d say ‘it’s the personal touch. Make the effort – go and see them. Don’t just talk to them on the phone.’
“And that’s something I do now. It’s a really big thing for me – taking the time to go and see people face to face.”
Much as he loves driving trucks, keeping the business going and family take priority: That changed 13 years ago, when daughter Madison was born: “I was inter-island a lot and I wasn’t home. But I said I don’t want to be THAT truck driver – I want to be part of their life. And that’s another Nana and Grandad influence: Family, family, family.
“I came off the road and into the office but I was like ‘oh, I don’t like this!’ – so I went back on the road again.
“The forever battle for me is that I want my cake and eat it too!: I’ve got the kids there and I want to spend the time with them – but then, if I don’t go to work, we don’t have any money.”
He says that his plan is to be able to spend more time at home and going to school camps while he can: “I’ve got two children and my partner Kate has two kids too, so we have a household of six one week and two the other.
He says that son Jax, 10, “was asked at school ‘what do you want to be?’ – and ‘he put down truck driver or a policeman’: I told him ‘you’re going in two different directions there boy.’
“But that got me thinking of when I used to hang around at
the yard as a kid and people used to say ‘are you gonna be a truck driver?’ and I used to say ‘yeah, yeah I’m keen as….’
“And they’d say ‘ah no, you wanna do something better with your life.’ But now I look at the young fellas wanting to be a truck driver and it is truly a profession: The days of ‘only’ being a truck driver have hopefully been flushed away.”
Partner Kate’s daughter Skyler is in the same class as Jax, and Daniel says she loves being around the business: “She gets out of bed early and comes to work with me first – before school. She’s right into it.
“She’s happy to clean the trucks (but wants money for it) and wants to drive the forklift too…but, of course, isn’t allowed. I think back to when I was around 12 and driving trucks in the yard: How times have changed.”
The nice balance he has now between family life and work is why Daniel likes the space he’s in these days – or will do, once he “fills up all the seats” again: “Finding staff is easy – I probably shouldn’t say that too loud. I think part of that is the gear that we’re running – people want to drive big shiny trucks. It’s never been a problem.
“But the thing with being such a small business is that it’s not just about being able to steer a truck. Each driver has to fit into our culture and our family, ‘cos we’re all pretty close within our group. You have to be able to work together.”
Daniel feels that in many ways Grandad Jim is still around and says that his Nana still rings him up and checks on him: “She says ‘I hope you’re not overworking yourself – your Grandfather used to do that.’ ”
Nana Bev also told him that his Grandfather never used to drink at the weekends “because weekends were for family.” However, Daniel reckons he’s since found out “the real reason” for the abstinence: “I was talking to Uncle Pete about that and he said that it was because he drank enough piss during the week that he needed the weekends to recover! There’s a few things like that that make you laugh.”
Daniel says that to this day he often looks back and thinks “what would Jim do?” For example: “I struggled to get a boat booking this week and my big epiphany the other night – after a couple of big bottles – was to go to Europe and hire a boat for back here!”
Yep, that is exactly what a frustrated, fed-up Jim did 30 years back, when Railways scheduled the servicing of a ferry right at the peak season for shifting livestock across Cook Strait.
Clearly Daniel is a chip off the Jim Barker block! T&D
