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It all starts with early stages, but will eventually feature a bar, lounge-type seating, billiard table and pizza oven inside and smokehouse outside.

In the workshop a former Ritchie’s bus is being set up as the latest staff party bus. It will also be used for groups supported by Suck It Up. Malcolm is a keen supporter of community activities, with the Canterbury Westland Air Rescue helicopter service being especially dear to his heart. Last year he was appointed an ambassador to the service in recognition of his support. During a ceremony at the Service’s Christchurch Airport headquarters he explained how he’d donated for years while a wage earner and had taken the opportunity to boost the amount significantly once Suck It Up was established.

At the time a plan to have a pair of the company’s trucks photographed alongside the Service’s Airbus H145 chopper was only partially completed. The Volvo hydro excavation unit was done, but before the Suck It Up speedway team Volvo transporter could get into position the helicopter was called away on a mission.

Above: The Ngatai home workshop is filled with a variety of competition machinery.

Below: General manager Doug Knight says the company offers potential recruits a huge variety of work, which would account in part for a low staff turnover.

Bottom: Fleet manager Chris Walding says setting up new units is enjoyable but challenging, with the sheer variety of equipment fitted to each truck.

The transporter is a 2013 Volvo FH, ex-Quality Bakers, with 1.7 million kilometres behind it but fitted with a new engine. A brilliant curtainsider mural features one of the Suck It Up hydro excavation units.

Malcolm’s support for speedway is every bit as enthusiastic as that for the Air Rescue service, sponsoring various championships and backing several other drivers. Yet it isn’t all one-way, he reckons: “It can also work from a business point of view, because several of the people we’ve sponsored have used Suck It Up’s services.”

He has been racing for 28 years now, having started in motorsport “latish” as he puts it. His competition career actually started in drag racing; “small cars with big engines, V8-powered Ford Cortina’s, Capris, Populars and the like. Then a mate suggested I look at speedway because it was less expensive. Well, that’s what I thought for the start, but as we went on I found it was every bit as expensive!”

He started with a Streetstock, then spent several years in Stock Cars and Super Stocks before moving into Super Saloons. A career high point was winning the New Zealand Super Stock title in the summer of 2008-09 and the Super Stock teams title in 2019, the only Christchurch team to have done so. This is on top of several South Island and Canterbury titles.

He gets great support domestically, he says: “My missus is from a speedway family and mad on the sport. When I was considering giving up five years ago because I felt I was getting too old, her response was: ‘I’ll tell you when you’re too old!’”

There has been a bit of a return to his competition roots with the acquisition of an early-60s Cadillac sedan that has been fitted with a supercharged 540cu in big block V8. The beast makes around 1200hp and has clocked an 11.5secs quarter mile. Mal reckons it could have gone quicker “but I was fighting it all the way down the strip to keep it straight!”

Suck It Up’s success in a specialised and competitive market leads to the question of expanding outside Christchurch or growing even bigger locally. Doug Knight reckons it would mean a total rethink of the current investment strategy and lean management approach.

“Malcolm and I have talked about this quite a lot, and we feel we’re in a sweet spot at the moment. To properly cover Christchurch has meant an enormous outlay in equipment. Were we to duplicate this elsewhere it would not only mean a huge increase in investment, but even more importantly we’d have to find the right people to operate the gear. And when you’re setting up in a new territory you have to have the best gear and people to win the contracts, which can detract from the service you’re offering in your established market.

“In fact, we have already gained a more countrywide image, without having to expand our operation, via six trucks we have on dry hire with other operators, four in Palmerston North and two in Dunedin. I went to Palmerston North for a week to bring the drivers there up to speed with the gear. The company there is happy with the way things are going, they have already had an approach from Fulton Hogan and have gained work they wouldn’t have got otherwise. They are happy to admit they couldn’t have afforded to buy a unit, so this has led to a win-win for everyone.

“Looking at the local market, we could probably double our size tomorrow, because the work’s out there, but if we did we’ve have to introduce a whole level of administration and management, which would swallow a good deal of the increased turnover. It has been a conscious decision to go light on administrative infrastructure, and for the moment it’s in balance.”

When it comes to staff recruitment and retention Suck It Up is in good shape, Doug reckons the variety of work and aboveaverage wages are factors in the low turnover, and says that a couple of the drivers have been with the company almost since its inception.

The trucks call for Class 2 and Class 4 licences. Several of the drivers have started with car licences only, and the company has paid for them to gain their heavy tickets. Doug admits they can sometimes leave for other companies, but isn’t fussed: “It’s swings and roundabouts. We can pay quite a lot in advertising for drivers with several years’ experience, but even then they’ll generally won’t be near as valuable as somebody who has come up through our system, and has been trained on the specialised gear we operate.

“At the interview stage with potential new staff it’s difficult to explain in detail what we do, the sheer variety of the work, and how flexible people need to be. Because of that, for anybody coming on board we offer a one- or two-week fully paid trial with no strings attached. That gives people the opportunity to decide if the job’s for them, without feeling pressured. After that we negotiate a standard contract.” T&D