Page 51 - Demo

Above: An overview of Lyttelton port and the dry dock. Stark Bros, to the right, and Lyttleton Engineering, to the left, are sometimes commercial rivals, sometimes co-operate on jobs
Opposite page, top pictures: e long horizontal reach of the PK92 is ideal for working alongside the dry dock
Opposite page, bottom pictures: Operations manager Cameron Stark (left) oversaw the setup of the latest crane truck, while general manager Ralph Stark (right) is one of the original brothers who gave the company its name
well as rubbish skips in Lyttelton itself. The latter work was picked up, as Bill explains, because some skip companies don’t like operating in the township....its streets are so steep and narrow. A Palfinger PK20 was also added around this time.
The current crane truck lineup comprises the three Volvo FMs and their big cranes, a Fuso Shogun 8x4 with a rear-mounted Hiab 322 crane and a Hino 500 with a PK12. Then there are the standard trucks – a Volvo FM 460 6x4, a 530hp Isuzu EXY 6x4 and a Scania 8x4, which between them handle the heavier haulage, plus two Hino 4x2 flatdecks and a Volvo FL10 4x2.
Trailers include three curtainsiders (two stepdeck semis and a B-train), half a dozen flatdeck semitrailer units and three tankers (including two 30,000-litre fuel-rated units).
Mostly the tankers are used to remove waste oil and bilge water from ships (since the bilge water
is often contaminated by oil and therefore cannot be discharged at sea). In these cases the water is separated out and the oil residue then disposed of.
There are also a couple of 25,000 litre stainless steel ISO tanks, that are occasionally used to transfer fuel oil from a ship for storage while the ship’s tanks are cleaned or repaired.
A trombone trailer, extendable to 26m, carries the long pipes used by dredging vessels, or pile casings needed for wharf upgrade work.
Finally, there’s a low loader that transports the occasional digger or over-height load, but more often is used for the Stark-built wire roller, which is set up to carry two reels and can pull 2500m of 30mm trawl wire off a ship onto the reels, or new wire from the reels back onto the ship. It has an integral brake system, allowing it to hold tension on the wire as it turns. It’s a very specialised bit of equipment, and in the past six months it has serviced boats in Timaru, Dunedin and Bluff.
The unit is used by electric power line companies as well. Whereas their equipment reels line onto the drums while the vehicle carrying them is mobile, the power of the Stark unit is such it can pull a couple of kilometres of wire.
A few years back the equipment was used to replace the cable for the Queenstown gondola. In that instance, its two-reel layout proved really useful, with one reel wound in, and the new line fed from the other drum.
The unit sits on a 20ft ISO twistlock base. Drive is supplied by an electric/hydraulic powerpack, which then drives through a rubberised wheel,
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