Page 50 - Demo

48 | Truck & Driver
“We already had a goods licence, bought from a local carrier, and not long after we gained another two.”
From the beginning, Ralph was active in transport politics, attending his first RTA meeting in 1964. He’s continued to be involved as a delegate and board member ever since.
The Chatham Islands crayfish boom of the 1960s and early 1970s also boosted the boatbuilding side, with timber vessels put to work as quickly
as the company could build them. Such was the money to be made from the crayfish at the time that, on one occasion, a brand-new boat was delivered....only to be wrecked and sink on its maiden voyage, prompting an immediate order for a replacement!
In the late 1960s Stark Bros also set up its own fishing company, Ocean Fisheries, which continues to this day, operating four Stark-built trawlers – the biggest of them 19 metres long.
The collapse of the crayfish boom in the 1970s forced a radical change in emphasis, with the
ship repair side of the business becoming more predominant. Over the next decade this intensified as the company expanded from working on mainly timber boats to offering a full range of ship repair engineering.
With bigger ships came bigger components.... and bigger trucks to carry them. And, just as importantly, there was a need for bigger cranes to lift them on and off ships...at the wharfside, or in the dry dock adjacent to the company’s headquarters.
That need led to the introduction in the early 1990s of Stark Bros’ truck-mounted cranes. The company now has four of them in frontline service (with a fifth, a fully-refurbished Palfinger PK66 on an ex-milktanker Volvo 8x4, currently for sale).
Because of the specialised but often intermittent work that the crane units are called on to do, they’re not constantly on the go. The same also applies to the balance of the fleet, meaning there are only five drivers for 10 trucks.
The two biggest crane units – the PK92 and a four-year-old PK78, both Volvo FM-mounted – have dedicated drivers (a reflection as much as anything else of the highly technical work they’re typically engaged in), while the other two are shared around, depending on jobs.
It has always been like this, reckons transport manager Bill Terry: “When I started here in 1990, we had nine trucks, all D-Series Fords – the only working museum in NZ! – and two drivers.
“We had a contract to cart all the drums of Caltex motor oils from that company’s depot
in Lyttelton to its transport and commercial customers and service stations in the wider Christchurch area. The other driver had this as a dedicated daily run...and I was left to drive the other eight trucks.
“There were a few times when I managed to drive them all in one day!”
The crane truck of the time was fitted with a Hiab 650, and was set up primarily to handle the non-quarantine rubbish skips scattered around the wharves – a contract the company still handles....as