With their latest Mack Trident, Road Metals are continuing a long line of Macks that dates back fifty years to their first R-Model.

New Zealand-based company Road Metals have been running Macks since they bought their first one in 1974. Now an R-Series, CH and MC all take pride of place in the company’s museum, but its descendant Tridents, Super-Liners and Metro-liners are a familiar site on the roads of the South Island, from Nelson to Invercargill.

COO Dan Francis is the third generation to work in the family business. Started in 1955 by his grandfather Stan, Road Metals has grown steadily ever since. The 15-year-old Dan started on a front-end loader, moved into the crushing plants, then to driving trucks and made it into head office 16 years ago.

When he started running the fleet they had seven trucks. Now they have 98.

“Most of the fleet are Macks and Volvos configured as 6x4 tippers with 4 or 5-axle trailers,” says Dan, “and when we moved into Kiwi Concrete we started buying Metro-liners as concrete agitators.”

The company’s 40 Macks are kept busy hauling sand and aggregate from quarries to building sites and towing mobile crushers to locations all over the island.

“We’ve got a pretty broad reach,” says Dan, “probably bigger than any of the competition, and we work on any job that needs these materials, whether it’s roads, house foundations or wind farms. A lot of our jobs are only 20 or 30 kilometre trips to and from the quarries, but we also haul contaminated materials and that can be a 300 kilometre journey.”

Macks have served the company well for fifty years and the latest models are particularly popular with the drivers.

“Each driver has his own truck, and they get to name them,” says Dan, “so they get pretty attached to them. When we first started getting the models with the m DRIVE automatic transmission we had a few old fellas who swore they’d never drive one. I said “Give it a go and if you don’t like it we’ll get you a manual”. And you know what? We haven’t been able to get them of those trucks ever since. They love the transmission and they all love the look of the Macks.”

As a fleet manager, Dan knows the importance of keeping his drivers happy, but he also understands the importance of reliability.

“We keep these trucks for a long time, probably way too long,” says Dan, “but they’ve proven themselves to be reliable year after year. We’re starting to sell some of our 2011 models, but some of our Macks are twenty years old and still going.”

The company has a mix of servicing models, running their own workshop at Oamaru in Otago, but using the Mack dealership for most of the fleet in Christchurch.

“The Mack support network is very good, and our approach to servicing is one reason we can keep these trucks going so long,” says Dan.

After a relatively quite few years, Dan is anticipating that business will start to increase in the coming years.

“New Zealand is way behind in terms of infrastructure,” he says, “so there’s no shortage of opportunities out there. If anyone wants to build something, we’ll be there to deliver the materials.”