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Freightliner’s Argosy has been the go-to truck for Burnell & Son Transport since the early 2000s – with more than 20 of them bought new. This chipliner is two years old

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One of the nine Argosys on the current fleet, a 2017 FRL dropsider H unit, emerges from the State Highway 1 tunnel south of Kaikoura

T’S ALMOST A TRUISM OF ANY BUSINESS – NOT just trucking fleets – that continued growth is not only important...but vital for survival. So it’s refreshing to come across a medium-sized fleet whose owner figures the 10 trucks currently on the register feels pretty right….thankyou.

Wayne Burnell, of Christchurch’s Burnell & Son Transport, obviously marches to the beat of a different drum.

Take the company name, as a minor but telling example: Did Wayne inherit the business from his father, or maybe even a grandfather? He laughs: “When we (he and wife Kathy) started up in 2000 our first child, Jacob, had just been born – so the name is a bit tongue in cheek.”

On top of that, Wayne points out: “I also like that oldschool way of naming fleets.”

Since then, as a matter of fact, the Burnells have had another two kids. So are any of them likely to join the company?

Well, that’s quite possible, Wayne reckons: “Jacob has his heavy truck licence and is driving for a living, in Australia. The next boy, Isaac, is doing a diesel technician apprenticeship, while our daughter Summer is about to leave school and will be studying at university next year.

“We’ve pushed all the kids to follow their own paths – to try other things,” he adds.

Several things set Burnells apart from the norm. The business is, for instance, really light on management: “Head office” is a couple of portacabins on a gravelled yard not far from Ruapuna Raceway, to the west of Christchurch – their regular occupants being only Wayne and dispatcher Laurie Harrington.

Most weekdays you’d be lucky to find a truck onsite, as the company specialises in long-distance transport of a variety of freight for a modest group of customers…and only a minor proportion of the trips begin or end in Christchurch.

Significant among the clients – and the very first one the company had – is Ashburton’s RX Plastics, which manufactures tanks and pipes for agricultural applications.

The path to the creation of the company….and it securing RX as its first customer, began in Timaru (where Wayne was born and raised) in the early 1990s – when he left school at 17 and got his heavy truck licence a year younger than is normally allowed.

He explains how it happened: “At the time my Dad was driving for Tregenzas (Timaru contractor G.E. Tregenza), and the company said they had a job for me if I could get a licence. So they provided a letter to the authorities for an exemption, which was approved.”

After a year with Tregenzas he went to Hervey Freight, which operated a Christchurch-Timaru run. Subsequently he moved to Christchurch, spending time variously with Samson Freight and Northern Southland on intercity freight runs before joining Ashburton’s Mark Reid – carrying RX Plastics products as far as Invercargill and returning with grain and fertiliser.

Wayne had been gone from that job for about a year when Reid got in touch – offering to sell him the business, as Wayne recounts: “So that was how Burnell & Son was born. We sold our house and ended up the owners of a Foden with around half a million kilometres on the clock, handling the RX work.

“It was barely a year before the dairy boom hit fully and RX became busy as. For a while I added a lease truck and employed a driver, but that didn’t work all that well, so I brought in a mate, Warren Grey, as an owner-driver.

“Back when we started, there were lots of guys with one or maybe two trucks, but that has changed completely. Things have got tighter and the admin and regulations add a whole lot to the workload for a single operator.

“In time, the Foden was replaced by a couple of Isuzus. They, in turn, gave way to the Freightliners which have been the fleet staple ever since. We’ve bought quite a few over the

Main picture: Seven-year-old Argosy chipliner heads north along the coast south of Kaikoura Top, left to right: Around 2010, company trucks parked up with two units owned by Riordan & West – the Pukekohe company that works in closely with Burnells (and just happens to also favour Argosys).....Wayne and one of the two Isuzus that preceded the Argosy era, in the early 2000s...A load comprising a full Alpine Buildings shed heads north, around Cheviot

years, and the lineup is currently nine Argosys and a Coronado.

“We stayed at five or six trucks for quite some time, only doing North Island trips when things were otherwise quiet in the winter. But with the opportunity to extend that (North Island) business we bought four more trucks and also brought on a dispatcher so that I could take a bit of a step backwards.”

Wayne had come to the realisation that he was burning himself out trying to do it all himself, so two years ago he brought on Laurie Harrington, who he already knew (from when they worked together at one stage at Hilton Haulage).

Over the past decade Burnell & Son’s work has expanded to include outdoor timber specialist Goldpine, Timaru’s Alpine Buildings and produce supplier Talley’s…..plus regular loads of coal and fertiliser from the south and steel from the north.

Wayne figures the current fleet size is about right: “There are 10 trucks and a total of 12 employees, with Laurie and me basically looking after the admin. We don’t really want to go any bigger than that. Of course, if any of our primary clients needed us to increase the work we do for them we’d have a look at that, but we’re not in the market to grow just for the sake of growing.

“Take RX Plastics. In the early years a couple of dropsiders handled their work, but over time they diversified a bit with the products they were producing. So then we added a couple of chipliners, and now we’ve got a couple of quad flatdecks and a flatdeck truck and trailer on their work.

“In the early days, when we had just the one truck, I would often tell myself about the rainy day that was inevitably going to happen, when we could catch up on administration and maintenance and do some forward planning.

“But I just kept working and working and as I finally said to Kathy: ‘I don’t think this rainy day is ever going to come – we’ll just have to buy another truck.’ And it has sort of been like that ever since.

“A significant driver for growth in first few years was the dairy boom, which saw RX Plastics expanding to meet demand. At the height of the dairy conversions – that’s going back around 12 years now – we would have had five trucks working solely for RX, carting pipes and tanks.

“In the meantime. Goldpine has become a very big part of our work. We do their main cartage from the Golden Downs (Nelson) plant as far as Invercargill, and also cart a lot into the North Island.

“Goldpine has a store in Invercargill, but a good proportion of the stuff goes direct to vineyard developments in Central Otago. In the North Island we work in with (Pukekohe transport operator) Riordan & West.

“In the past couple of years we’ve done quite a lot of horticulture produce out of mid-Canterbury for the Talley’s processing plant in Blenheim. From there it’s not too long a hop over to the Goldpine plant at Kohatu for a run maybe as far as Invercargill, then bringing fertiliser or coal back to

Seven-year-old dropside tipper unit delivers a load of fertiliser to the store in Ashburton

Timaru or Ashburton.

“Ballance’s phosphate fertiliser for the South Island comes from the plant at Awarua near Invercargill, and we cart a lot of that north.

“For the most part we manage to get loads out of most areas, though naturally it goes up and down a bit with the seasons. We had a couple of bathtub tippers for a while, but we got rid of them: That segment of the market is so competitive. And dropsiders can do just as well for bulk stuff – but with a lot more versatility. For example, we can carry posts to Southland and return with bulk fertiliser on the same unit.”

Harvested crops that Burnells handle for Talleys include corn, carrots and potatoes. Where possible, says Wayne, they try to balance the availability of the trucks with the output from the fields and the demand from the processing plant, “but that’s not something that can be set in stone, when you get variables like weather and harvesting problems to contend with.

“The trick is to be proactive and keep the communication channels open all the time – with phone calls, texts and emails. Laurie is constantly in touch with the clients, letting them know when trucks will be arriving – either at the field or the processing plant.”

In terms of generating volume, Christchurch is not a big hub for the company, Wayne adds: “I guess the major cargo we would cart from here is fertiliser from Ravensdown to Nelson. A lot of the time we’re just passing through Christchurch. Inward loads include Ballance fertiliser from Invercargill to the Rolleston storage facility, and steel out of Glenbrook near Auckland.

“On top of that, although the whole fleet is nominally ‘based’ in Christchurch, the drivers are spread over quite a variety of home locations. Five live in Ashburton, three in Christchurch, two in Timaru and one even further south, in Glenavy.

“The Glenavy driver handles the Ashburton to Invercargill work and keeps his truck at home, as does one of the Timaru guys. We also have provision for parking in Ashburton, but the others generally drive here to kick their week off.

“When people come to work with us they know that they are going to be away from home for most of the week. You’ve got to be prepared to leave on Monday and get home on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. That’s just what the job calls for.”

With that in mind, both Wayne and Laurie agree it’s not a job for everyone. Drivers need to be self-starters: They just go where the jobs are, as Laurie explains: “Once the guys leave here on a Sunday afternoon or Monday morning they just go until they stop – and sometimes, depending on where the loads take them, might not be back until Friday.

“Even the ones who are based here have little need to call in during the week. They could be loaded here, deliver whatever cargo they have to Nelson, pick up at Goldpine and get back as far as maybe Culverden before they run out of hours, so that’s where they overnight.

“There’s a good deal of self-management involved. By Tuesday lunchtime I can give the guys a list of jobs for the week, and we don’t expect them to be checking in all the time for detailed directions. They know what needs doing, and we leave them to get the job done.

“We use MyTrucking, and find it’s great for not only allowing the drivers to do the job efficiently, but letting us know how things are going without having to be always checking up.”

Adds Wayne: “Basically, they just keep working within their logbook hours, so wherever they are when their time is up is where they overnight. Depending on traffic and other factors,

that can cover quite a spread of territory. It also means there is never any guarantee as to how many trucks we might have in the Christchurch area – sometimes it’s two, at others it might be eight.

“Ideally we have most of them here for the weekend and the drivers can have that time off – though in the peak of the produce harvesting season that can become a lot more fluid.

“And even that is something that has been a factor for only a couple of years at the most. Prior to that we were pretty much Monday to Friday all the time, so the guys can be knocked off mid-afternoon on Friday, and ready to start late Sunday or early Monday, which gives them quality time in the weekends.”

The sleeper-cab Argosys play a vital part in the way the company goes about its business, Wayne adds: “Right from the start this is the way we’ve operated, and why the Argosys have been so good for us. They have the option of the 110-inch cab, which means that critical bit of extra room and a wider mattress.

“And since COVID has hit it has proved to be the most sensible decision we’ve ever made. The pandemic has certainly added to the overall cost of carrying out business. But with the guys living out of the trucks, it means they can keep contact with other people to a minimum.

“We didn’t have this sort of scenario in mind when we set up the trucks, but it has certainly worked in our favour!”

Which raises the question of a replacement model for the now-discontinued Argosy. Wayne is sad but philosophical about the end of production of the cabover Freightliner: “It was an ideal model for us – simple, uncomplicated, big sleeper cabs, a proven drivetrain and a brilliant tare weight.

“But, let’s face it, they couldn’t keep it going just for New Zealand. I have visited the factory in the States and seen how they produce around 250 units a day. An entire year’s sales of Freightliner here would take less than half a day.”

He’s not a huge fan of the European makes, so he accepts that the logical replacement model for the Argosy will be Kenworth’s K series – but probably, he suspects, at the cost of some payload.

“At the moment,” he explains, “all of our trucks and trailers, bar one, are running on a 54-tonne permit, which gives us a payload of 35t. At the 50MAX we were running to until last Christmas, our dropsiders could carry 31t.”

New trailer gear generally comes from MD Engineering in Balclutha, while Gary Cowan Engineering has also done a couple of units. SAF axles and brakes are standard across the whole of the trailer lineup.

Maintenance support is all external, Wayne points out: “We used to use Prestige Commercial Vehicles – until they lost the Daimler franchise, which left a really big hole. Not only here but also in the North Island, because of their link with Trucks and Trailers.”

Now, in Christchurch the company uses Penske or Transport Repair Services – and also goes to TRS around the rest of the South Island.

He reckons the modest size of the fleet and its lean support system offers a good balance: “We’ve got a great crew of drivers at the moment, but if we doubled our size we would struggle to find an equal number of the same quality. And if we

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Right: Wayne shares his time between admin and fill-in driving Above: The 2018 Freightliner Coronado carries a tribute to Wayne’s Dad, the late Ron Burnell Left: There’s a tradition of super-hero names/murals on the Burnell trucks. The artwork is done by Timaru Signs Graphix

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Top: The newest Argosy on the fleet, a 2020 model FRL, delivers a container with the Hammar sideloader (which is not in daily use) Above left: Wayne’s Dad, the late Ron (Rocky) Burnell, with Burnell & Son’s first truck – a ‘97 Foden S108 that came with around half a million Ks on the clock. Wayne followed in his Dad’s footsteps in becoming a truckie....and Ron later drove for him on occasions Above right: Northern Southland ‘88 model Mercedes-Benz 2235 was one of Wayne’s early drives

were five times this size we’d need to have a far more complex – and costly – management structure.

“We pay our drivers a fair wage – and we also work hard to ensure they have fun. We want them to stay, so if they need time off we try to look after them.

“I spend quite a lot of time on the road, filling-in for guys who are on leave. It’s not only enjoyable, but gives me a good sense of the issues the drivers face. Often the people at the client companies don’t know who I am – I’m just another driver, filling-in – and it gives me a more accurate feeling of how we’re going as a company.

“We don’t have too much trouble picking up drivers when they’re needed – generally through word of mouth. Being on the road for most of the week isn’t for everyone, but the regular weekends off compensate. The gear helps too.”

That said, he feels the licence system is due for an overhaul if the industry is to get on top of the driver shortage – contrasting the current situation with his own experience in the early 1990s: “Not only was I young, but compared with today’s drawn-out process, scoring a licence then was really quick and simple...

“And I was granted the equivalent of a Class 5 straight-up, with endorsements for the other levels not coming in until several years later.”

He believes the licensing system could be made a lot less cumbersome, which would go a long way to bringing a desperately-needed influx of younger drivers into the industry: “The whole process needs to be made more accessible, because three to four years and several thousand dollars is a Continues on page 58

Main picture, below: Five-yearold dropsider Argosy passes by Frog Rock, on the Weka Pass Road Left: The lone Burnells Coronado and its Argosy fleetmates a couple of years ago. With production now ceased of the Freightliner cabover, a decision looms on a replacement Right: Wayne’s first driving job was with Tregenzas in Timaru, where he took the wheel of this 1988 Mack R686ST

Top: This 2018 Argosy dropsider totes another load of posts for Goldpine, one of Burnells’ major customers Above left: Laurie Harrington has been the company’s dispatcher since 2019 Above right: A tipper unit and a chipliner, pictured about 10 years ago

Continued from page 55

huge hurdle for a young person with limited job prospects.”

Wayne and Laurie emphasise that Burnell & Son Transport is definitely not about growth at any cost. Far from it, in fact – both men seeing that as a potentially dangerous concept for a medium-sized business to pursue.

Says Laurie: “Some companies work to a mindset of ‘growth is everything’ – so they’re always looking at the next big contract, so they can put on five more trucks.” A better way, he believes, is “to find a profitable balance point.”

Wayne agrees – and says that maintaining good relationships with customers is critically important: “You have to keep going. You can lose contracts out of the blue, or whole industries can change their focus – so that work has to be replaced.

“But the old ‘one door closes, another opens’ principle often comes into play. And if you’ve been giving your customer good service, even when their circumstances change and the work they have is different they’ll want to keep up the association. That’s when you need to be adaptable.”

In a similar way, he adds, “sticking with customers is also important.” He points to longtime customer Alpine Buildings as an example: The relationship began when the customer was just starting out – with only intermittent loads.

“Now they’re accounting for up to three trucks a week.” T&D