LEGENDS
Hooked on HGVs – Goose Haddock
W
HAKATANE-BASED SPRAY PAINTERS ‘HADDOCKS’ HAVE been keeping NZ trucks looking pristine and shipshape for almost four decades. ‘Goose’ Haddock joined the family business in the mid-eighties and his ‘stand by what we do’ attitude has seen the company grow from a staff of three to twenty- three. Goose is a dedicated craftsman with a passion for the industry and is hellbent on bringing new talent to the business, yet no-one (aside from the IRD) knows his real name - for that, he’s this month’s Southpac legend. With a surname such as Haddock, you’d feel that paint spraying and panel beating wouldn’t be Goose’s first career choice, and you’d be correct. “Our whole family has grown up fishing out of Whakatane here. So, when I originally left school, I headed out to sea and went commercial fishing,” says Goose. With fishing in the blood, Goose took to life at sea with relish and it was a career that he spent four years at, however, onshore life was calling and that meant a big change. “I was going to get married, so I decided that I wanted to be home. I started work for my father, Dave, he started Dave Haddock Spraypainters in 1984 and I joined him in 1986.” Goose recalls that back in those days they did a lot of vehicle work for Barry Judge of Judge Motors and Ed Barker Motors, and most of the trucks they did back then were for Dawe and Sons in Te Puke and JD Lyons in Lower Hutt, ‘they were big companies back in the day’.
54 | Truck & Driver
“In 1986 there were three of us and we just worked out of one booth, we stripped all the trucks there, painted them and put them back together.” Goose says that the business trucked along reasonably well, but dramatically increased once they started painting trucks for a salesman called Lyndsay Gemmell. “He was selling trucks for Mercedes at the time and about the third or fourth truck that we did for them was for Mark McCarthy [McCarthy Transport] at Raetihi.” Goose believes that they started painting trucks for Mark [McCarthy] in ‘87 and immediately forged a great relationship with him, which in turn led to a big upturn in workload. “We met a lot of people through Mark, especially in the industry and that put us on our feet. And we’re still very good friends up to this day.” He says that back then, Mark was in business with Warwick Wilshier at MWT in Christchurch and from there they started doing Warwick’s work in Rotorua, ‘and we grew from there’. “We got quite well known for painting log trucks,” says Goose proudly.
