Page 57 - Demo

TRANSPORT IMAGING AWARDS
All pictures, clockwise from above left: e yellow and red colours were in evidence after the owner of the Auckland NZE branch bought the 107-year-old Brightlings Transport in Christchurch in 1974.... the distinctive arrowhead E company logo... the company is one of NZ’s oldest transport operations... one of the company’s DAF CF85s shows o the current livery, with the red dropping down on the front edges of the cab and swooping up at the rear – with the colours reversed (red Swinglift cranes and yellow skeletal) on the trailer.... the straight lines of the livery back in 1999.... old Bedford owned and restored by NZE sta ers Barney McGrath and Colin Richens sits alongside a current-model Fuso, highlighting the livery changes
the new owners took over – coming up with Express Cream and Express Red in consultation with PPG.
Says John Petrie: “When we took over NZE there must have been ve or six di erent-coloured yellows in the eet, because everybody was using a di erent painter...”
At the time, half of the 36-strong eet comprised owner/driver trucks
– and “the owner/drivers all went to wherever they could to get the cheapest deal to paint ‘em. And nobody had actually done too much about trying to standardise it.”
e company, which specialises in transporting shipping containers, runs a mix of makes in its eet of 40-odd trucks, with Freightliner, UD, Fuso, Kenworth, DAF, Mack, Volvo, Scania, International and Isuzu
trucks included –
a few conventionals amongst them. But Petrie is “pretty proud” with
the way they all look “pretty much the same,” thanks to the work of Wayne Ashby and his team at Reliance Collision Repairs, Truck Painting, Graphix.
When dealing with a new model
– like the DAF CF85s that feature
on the PPG Transporting Imaging Awards poster this month and which are the latest additions to the eet – the Reliance graphic artists provide concept drawings ...and then it’s
a matter of working around any peculiarities in the cabs to make them look the same.
Says Petrie: “ ey do the whole job. We just leave the truck there and it comes out – the right colours...and signwritten.”
Petrie told the 150th birthday celebrations that soon after the current owners took over the company he had a meeting with an Auckland client who’d “successfully built a sizeable business and asked me if we were keeping the NZE brand, as he had thought we should change it as it had a ‘less than desirable record’ for supply and services in Auckland.
“I replied that we had no intention of changing the brand as it was an icon of the NZ transport history.
“About ve years ago this person sold their business to a larger operator in their industry and his brand is gone and lost forever. Sad really, as it will never feature in history....unlike NZE.” T&D
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