Bryan Menefy

A man with a message

By Wayne Munro

Bryan Menefy, who died in June, pictured in 2014 with some of the Macks in his Menefy Trucking operation. The Super-Liner at the forefront was his flagship at the time – bearing spectacular murals inspired by the Pink Floyd album and movie, The Wall

MANAWATU TRANSPORT OPERATOR BRYAN MENEFY – WHO DIED

in late June – ran trucks that carried some of the most out-there, offthe-wall branding seen on Kiwi commercial vehicles.

Menefy, widely known as Ruffy, was just 57 when he succumbed to the motor neurone disease that he’d battled for five years.

In 25 years of business his Menefy Trucking operation – heavily involved in tanker and flat deck work – had established a presence on the New Zealand trucking scene that was arguably much greater than its modest size.

And that was largely down to a mix of a few things: His passion for the trucking industry and his drive to succeed in it – sometimes against the odds – and his great love of Macks…and for the British rock band Pink Floyd…

Plus a willingness to combine those influences to send messages to those who’d laughed at him, lied to him or maybe tried to bully him during his 35-plus years in trucking.

The trucks, NZ Truck & Driver discovered when we profiled Menefy Trucking back in 2014, revealed telling clues as to what made him tick…and how he’d built his successful 12-truck business.

Every truck he bought (12 new Macks, a bunch of second-hand Bulldogs and a few “un-loyal” makes) was given a name inspired by Pink Floyd songs or lyrics – because they resonated with him.

Thus, among others, the Menefy fleet featured names like The Thin Ice…Welcome To The Machine…One Slip….I’ve Been Mad For Years.

The sleeper cab and doors on his 2014 Mack Super-Liner (named Run Like Hell) – the Menefy Trucking flagship at the time – carried eye-popping full-colour murals of scenes inspired by The Wall album and movie….about a man descending into madness.

He explained: The theme of Pink Floyd’s music “is all about insanity and madness and that sort of stuff – and it fits me perfectly.

“I relate to them. They don’t sing love songs like everyone else does. Their albums are stories…..stories about the demise of an individual, for instance.”

The Brain Damage name originally given to a beloved 1999 UltraLiner, for instance, made sense because “all my life, since I was a kid – a crazy bugger in cars, on motorbikes and stuff like that – all my mates have reckoned: ‘Ah you’re mad, you bugger!’ You know.”

Another truck was named Us And Them: “Plenty of critics out there,” he summed up. He also had a mural painted on the back of one truck showing a bare backside – a “tribute to an arsehole” encountered in a legal dispute.

Even before the Pink Floyd-inspired branding – during Bryan’s early years as an owner-driver, in the late 1990s – his truck names carried heartfelt messages. When a boss ordered him to cut his long red hair, he refused…resulting in the Menefy truck often staying “parked-up by the back fence.” So Bryan named the truck Scotch Mist – because “that’s what we were to that prick.”

He poked fun at Kenworth with rego plates like UP KW and UP U KW – just for a laugh, not because he hated them. In fact, he even considered buying a Kenworth as his first truck – rather than a CH Mack….but the salesman “laughed in my face….thought I was a tyre-kicker.”

Macks marked many major points in his life – Bryan treating himself to a handful of Mack “hobby trucks,” including a beloved R722 Super-Liner, a 1999 610hp Ultra-Liner, a Cruise-Liner, an ’82 R797 and an ’83 R700.

His love of the Bulldog brand had begun in his schoolboy days – when he’d ride his bike down to Motor Truck Distributors’ yard in Palmerston North to ogle the new trucks.

In 2014 he’d had recent offers to buy the business: “I thought ‘no, I’m not doing this for money – I’m doing it because this is stuff that’s been in my head since I was a kid.’ ”

Menefy had been working at the flour mills in Palmerston North in his late teens when “the truck blood came out in me….because

Above: Bryan Menefy reckoned that Pink Floyd’s words and music resonated with him – resulting in some of the wildest graphics to appear on a Kiwi commercial vehicle….like these images on his 2014 Super-Liner, nicknamed Run Like Hell. Below: Bryan’s “hobby trucks” back in 2014: A ’99 model 610hp Ultra-Liner, a just-purchased R700, a Cruise-Liner and his treasured R722 Super-Liner

you’d get trucks for Africa there..”

He convinced some ODs to let him move their R Model Macks around at the mill.

Extraordinarily, it ended-up with him regularly standing-in for some of the ODs – “sneaking-off” from his job at the mill to take over a truck for the best part of a day.

It was a win/win: The ODs got some time off – “and they were still getting paid. And I was getting my bloody backside in a Mack…yeah.”

It was a Mack that he scored in his first fulltime driving job, at 21: A 440hp Super-Liner.

And a few years later a Mack CH lured him into driving a fuel tanker: “It was the truck that did it….it was a cool truck.”

When Bryan Menefy’s funeral was held in Palmerston North last month, his white coffin was transported on the last Super-Liner he bought, named One of These Days.

The funeral cortege was led by a pilot vehicle carrying the sign: “Mack legend follows.”

Behind were more than 50 trucks – most of them Macks and including his Menefy Trucking Bulldogs and collector trucks. MTD paid its respects by rolling out what seemed like every Mack at its disposal.

Bryan had sold Menefy Trucking to PTS Logistics a couple of years after being diagnosed with the terminal disease – staying on “as long as he was able to” to manage the business, says longtime friend (and former Mack NZ general manager) Murray Sowerby.

And he sold his collector Macks a couple of years ago to mate John Matangi, who has kept them in their original colours and branding.

Menefy’s small FloydTrans business continued to operate until just before his death.

Sowerby first met Bryan by selling him Mack parts, then Mack trucks. He became a valued, loyal customer…..and then a close friend.

Menefy Trucking rated as probably one of Mack’s top two most loyal single-owner businesses in NZ.

Sowerby also says Bryan Menefy is “the one who drove me to build an eight-wheeler Super-Liner like we’ve got today. He reckoned it’d be better than a bloody Western Star or a Kenworth, you know….”

So when Mack Australia said it couldn’t justify building an 8x4 Super-Liner in its factory, under Sowerby’s management and Menefy’s encouragement “it ended up being done by MTD in NZ. Bryan got the first one we built.” T&D