Hooked on HGVs – Goose Haddock

WHAKATANE-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’.

“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.

Over the years Haddock Spraypainters and Panelbeaters grew in both size and operations and along the way the name changed from Dave Haddock to Haddock Spray Painters 2003 and then to 2015.

“2003 was when I bought my father out (he retired), explains Goose, “and 2015 we bought another business, a car paint and panel shop, and put the whole lot into a new company.”

The Whakatane business now has three, very busy divisions. Their crash repair and painting side handles about eighty cars a month, while the marine division paints around twenty boats a month. However, it’s the truck side of the business that remains Goose’s passion.

Despite their ‘out of the way’ location, their clients span New Zealand wide, and include the likes of McCarthy Transport Limited, Williams & Wilshier, Heikell Transport, Penske Tauranga and many more.

“We do a lot of work for Southpac trucks on the log trucks, our biggest one a couple of years ago was for Farmers Transport, we did all those DAFs. And we do work with Steve Herring down in Christchurch.”

Along from the work itself, it’s the people in the industry that Goose holds so dear.

“They are really neat people to work with, so friendly, and when you see a truck on the road, you get quite a kick out of it.”

Adding that he just enjoys the industry, “We take our boat up to Truckers and Loggers every year now, been doing that for the past decade and catching up with all our customers there and I have just come back from the Brisbane truck show which was more customer based.”

In terms of lows, Goose says that there have been very few. Covid slowed them down quite a bit, and he says that they took a bit of a hit there, but believes that overall, they have been very lucky.

“I’m not sure whether it’s because we’re based in Whakatane, but I personally pick up and deliver about 80% of the trucks. Because we pick up and deliver, I can spend up to three times a week driving to Rotorua. We’re only an hour 15 from there. I really enjoy that part, especially when you get a chance to drop the truck off to a customer and have a chat to see what’s happening.”

Goose says that both personally and in business he doesn’t shy away from too much, and one of his toughest jobs was quite recent where they painted all the lighting towers for the FMG stadium in Hamilton.

“They were all craned here, and the yard was full. They were 12m in the air and we galvanised and painted them.”

He credits the flexibility of his staff to be able to tackle such tasks too. “We can pull staff off one side of the business and on to another side, so we are very multi-purpose, they can multitask.”

However, finding qualified staff is probably Goose’s biggest issue,

“We are pretty multicultural here and we are running five apprentices which we’ll keep as many as we can. But we’re still having problems getting young guys into the industry and that’s a sad part. We haven’t got the young ones around here that want to do it, we’ll advertise and get nobody - and it’s such a great industry to be in. We could do with another half a dozen more staff.” about 200.”

To help compensate for the shortfall, the business has had to adapt, including having someone specifically designated to strip and fit trucks, he says this process is helping to keep their quality where it should be.

“We stand by what we do, if there are any issues, we’re only human, we fix them. And we make sure the customer is happy,” adding that it doesn’t matter how big or small their clients are, they are all treated equally.

Goose’s approach to quality evidently flows through to the new recruits too as they’ve recently had one of their apprentices with the NZ CRA (Crash Repair Association) Golden Gun award.

Also, the crash repair side of the business is assisting in them having an eye on the future of transport, with the prospect of EVs now not phasing them at all.

“We go through EV courses with the CRA. A lot of the training is done online, but you have to be very careful when working on them. It’s not if, it’s going to be when we move into hydrogen and electric trucks.”

Goose says that his personal thing is that he really enjoys fishing, and that they’ve got a big family boat that he loves spending time on. He’s lived in Whakatane all his life, he was President of the fishing club for 6 years and been involved with the club in some shape or form for around 20-years. What’s more, he ‘luckily’ shares this pastime with others.

“A lot of my clients go fishing together and have become really good friends.”

His wife of 22-years Kerri, has also taken up lawn bowling as a pass time and although Goose is rather enjoying the sport too, feels that it will be a bigger sell to get his clients on board.

Goose is now fifty- nine years old and has been in the industry since ‘86, so obviously the matter of retirement has been raised. He has two girls, however, neither of them are joining the business (one is Nurse and the other runs her own doggy daycare business), so he says that he now has a partner Craig Pinkerton, and he is Goose’s exit strategy (but not just yet).

Last but by no means least, what of Goose’s nickname.

“Goose has been my name since school, anytime anyone rings up with my real name I think it’s the IRD, so I always cringe,” he jokes. As it turns out, the ‘Goose’ came about when he was a kid.

“I could never keep sheets on when in a cot, so my mother made me a sleeping bag, but it had arms and not legs. I used to get out of my cot and waddle down the hallway, and they’d say, ‘here comes mother goose’, I’m glad the mother part got dropped. But it has stuck from there.”

And for those that really need to know, Goose’s real name is Glenn, but don’t tell him we told you! T&D

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