LEGENDS
Trevor Jackson T
O SAY TREVOR JACKSON HAS HAD a rollercoaster ride in life wouldn’t be strictly true. Like any company, his Pahiatua-based trailer maker, Jackson Enterprises, has had its share of ups and downs, but overall it has built an enviable reputation for innovation and quality and has enjoyed steady growth. In a literal sense, though, Trevor’s life is a rollercoaster – courtesy of a full-size, 380m track he has designed and built on his rural property. The project took three and a half years to complete and had its maiden run just a few months ago, on New Year’s Eve 2021. Trevor was the guinea pig for the inaugural ride and recalls the sensation: “I strapped myself into the four-seater car and off we went. I nearly shit myself!” Apart from the occasional shutdown for modification and tinkering, the track has run regularly ever since. Inspiration for the project, he says, came from his three daughters, and he is looking forward to his grandchildren enjoying it for many years to come. Construction was not a problem, he adds: “We have a talented team here who are dealing with steel welding all the time. Nor was getting approval from the local council too much of a hassle. In fact, the biggest challenge was that the shed housing the drive mechanism was a couple of square metres over regulations and it took a while to get a special permit for that. There was also a height restriction of 10 metres, but we needed something over 13 metres to gain
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the momentum to do the full distance... so we just dug a trench and put the structure into that!” The 31-year history of Jackson Enterprises is peppered with dozens of examples of thinking outside the square. Among the ones that stand out in Trevor’s mind are the roll-up curtains for the export Gib-board trailers operated by Auckland’s CV Compton Ltd for Winstones. The trailers were built to a special over-width permit, at 2650mm, to ensure the 2400mm-wide sheets of Gib could be carted to port without damage to their edges. The permit specified that the trailer units could only be used on that project. The curtains were fitted to drums, ensuring an optimal saving in width. The design was also dictated by regulations at the production facility that the truck drivers
had to remain in their cabs. Another interesting and challenging project he recalls was the transporter developed for Solid Energy at the Stockton mine on the South Island’s West Coast. The unit featured five rows of two axles, with four wheels per axle. The trailer itself weighed 57t, and it was capable of carrying 200t excavators. The tractor unit was based on a CAT 777 offroad dump truck, its 12-cylinder C32 engine producing just over 1000hp. Another Jackson Enterprises specialty has been the company’s remotely operated effluent valves, developed in the late 1990s and fitted to stock crates. The valves are
