When Freight Lines bought a company, they kept the name and didn’t change the branding

driveway and had to back-up. Dad just sat and watched us but that’s how we learned.”

Barry made the move from working for both Nupin and Freight Lines to a bigger role with Jim Barker’s company.

“The catalyst for the sale was when the rail was bought out by a group including Wisconsin Central from America. They came in and offered these bloody ridiculous rates, but they didn’t have the service delivery.”

The Nupin name didn’t immediately disappear from the highways.

“When they [Freight Lines] bought a company, they kept the name and didn’t change the branding,” says Barry.

“Then as the gear came up for replacement the old branding gradually disappeared. They [Bulk Lines] still have Nupin Distributors - it’s essentially a holding company for them and the Bulk Lines trucks still operate under the Nupin Distributors TSL licence.”

Keith, Barry and Glen all went to work for Freight Lines.

“When they took us over, I stayed working for them for about three years but over time they bought their people in and I backed out,” says Keith.

However, Keith hasn’t ventured very far from the empire Jim Barker built and semi-retirement in Picton sees him working as a StraitNZ patch driver, moving trailers on and off the Bluebridge ferries with the tugs.

Glen stayed for about six years before establishing a security company in Tauranga and Barry became the Freight Lines CEO for a 13-year stretch. For more than 20 years the Nupin name only existed in the Freight Lines company and license documentation.

It was in late 2021 when the first ideas for Nupin Transport began to take shape.

“Glen was working for PRH (Paengaroa Road Haulage), and they were getting out of trucks. We were just yacking and throwing a lot of things at the wall to see what would stick. And everything stuck,” says Barry.

The first move was to buy four trucks from PRH to do container work, an area where Glen specialised for both Freight Lines and PRH.

In mid-2023 there are now five Nupin trucks, plus three ownerdrivers and a varying number of sub-contractors.

“Some days we are running 10 or 15 trucks,” says Glen.

“We’ve now taken on a couple of flat decks and branched out into curtain siders. We are using the sub-contractors as the doors open for us and then we’ll build up the fleet.

“We are trying to be versatile. We’ve got one tipping skelly, the flat decks and now we’ve got a dedicated tractor unit.”

It’s the most recent addition to the fleet that has put the spotlight on the Nupin glory days.

The 2018 Kenworth K200 8x4 has recently been painted in a similar design to the original Nupin blue striped colours with a

MEDIUM-DUTY TIPPER WITH SLIDING TRAY 2-IN-1

Slide Movement

With a push of “REAR” button, (1) Body tips up approx. 14 degrees, then (2) Body automatically slides down to the rear. The movements of body and stabilizing roller are linked and automatically controlled.

COMPACTOR BODIES CAN BE SUPPLIED IN 4M3 TO 12.2M3

Recycle Packer

• Specially designed for recyclable waste

• 2, 3 or 4 compartment body for separated collection

• Rear loading, rear discharge (tip out)

• Low emission thanks to idle speed operation

• Flat-side design, suited for ads modernised version of the company logo from the `eighties and `nineties.

“By early next year we plan to have another couple of trucks in the new colours,” says Barry.

“We’ve called it The Legacy as a tribute to Keith and Dad. We are pretty proud of what they had back in the day.

“Back then there was a handful of companies that had the top gear – Alexanders, Lamberts, Combined Haulage and us,” says Barry.

The Nupin brand was closely associated with the Kenworth marque.

“At one point we had eight Kenworths and a Foden, and the guy from Kenworth told Colin if we got rid of the Foden we’d have biggest privately owned fleet of Kenworths in New Zealand,” says Keith.

“Back then a Kenworth was still something a bit different and special. Now they are everywhere, and they have all the bling, and they look unreal.”

The blue K200 has prompted a great deal of interest and memories for those who remember the Nupin name on the road 30-plus years ago and more.

“One of our guys stopped in Tokoroa and had someone ask them if it was the old company,” says Glen.

“Another driver came to ask us about the story behind the name because people had been asking him and he didn’t know. He wanted to be able to tell the story the next time someone asked.”

Barry Raymond says Nupin Distributors had built its operation on service delivery.

“People asked and we made it happen,” he says.

And the same approach applies to the new company.

“If someone rings up and we can’t do it we tell them up front. But nine times out of 10 we make it happen,” says Barry.

The day-to-day operation of Nupin Transport is handled by Glen and Barry, with Barry’s daughter Jaimee Reynolds as the admin manager having transitioned from the travel industry.

Nupin Transport is currently basing its trucks from the Addline Transport yard in Welcome Bay.

“Glen is based down in Tauranga, and he controls the trucks and looks after the operations. Jaimee and I are in Pukekohe. Jaimee does all the admin and paperwork and I’m in the background doing the pricing and brokering,” says Barry.

“It’s like the old days. Keith used to do all the work and the old man counted the money.

“One thing that has changed is that PRH only really used to run around Tauranga, but we are going everywhere. We picked up work from way up north of Kaitaia and we run to Hawera and Wairoa and Gisborne.”

Glen says the flat decks have given the company a new direction.

“Some customers have said `just keep coming till we tell you otherwise’. We’ve moved Portacoms and stuff all over the place.”

Glen says the drivers appreciate the variety of work Nupin Transport is now doing and he’s enjoyed teaching container truck drivers how to tarp loads on flat beds.

“But the biggest thing is our staff,” says Glen.

“We’ve only lost one guy in 18 months, who left for some personal reasons and not to drive for someone else. We’ve still got the same guys and we think that we treat them well. We do stuff outside of work for them and their families.”

For the first year of operation Nupin Transport was primarily a container cartage operation. At the end of 2022

“The boys love statistics and we figured out that in 12 months we had moved just under 7000 containers with four trucks.”

So why have the Raymond brothers made their return to the transport industry?

“It’s just a challenge,” says Glen.

“We’ve each had our own individual businesses. Barry had a butcher’s shop running and I had a security company for 20 years. It’s another challenge.

“And in my previous jobs, if I went away, I was still being contacted all the time. Now I can go away, and Jaimee can take over.”

While Keith Nicholson says the only business plan that Nupin Distribution had was “to keep the bloody thing running”, Barry Raymond has some early ideas on how Nupin Transport will evolve.

“We’re not going to be another hundred truck fleet. We want to grow a bit more, but to a comfortable size we can manage within the family,” says Barry.

“I think some of the big companies have become so big, they have lost that personal touch.

“That’s where we have got a lot of our work from. When people ring us, they get us – not a voice saying press 1 or press 2 or something.

“My thing would be to build it up big enough where we always remain reliable and focused on service delivery.

“I’m 55 now and Glen is 57, so if we want to take a month off our kids can run it and we’d just be there in the background to help if needed,” says Barry. T&D