Live music, food stalls, crowds and, of course, trucks – the 2023 McDonough Contracting Gore Truck Show had it all.

King’s Birthday Weekend (that takes a bit of saying) in Gore is buzzing with visitors attending the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards presented by the Gore Country Music Club. As a part of the annual event, a truck show and parade are staged by enthusiastic locals, who marshal the entrants for judging and public viewing. The static display is assembled at Transport Repairs’ Gore branch, where they are scored for the accumulators to calculate the award winners. A parade is held from the South Gore venue up the main street and back, from where the entrants can either disperse or attend the prizegiving function at the Croydon Lodge Hotel.

Live music was played during the allocated judging time, and there were several food stalls to tempt all. In the Transport Repairs workshop, there was a colouring competition display, which had been run in the local newspaper, and several vendors trading in models and giftware.

The streets were lined with hundreds of people watching the parade. It’s an exciting time for small children and adults alike to watch the procession.

The prizegiving gathering was well attended, with many staying on afterwards to enjoy a meal and socialise with like-minded friends, old and new. Bruce Robertson led the prizegiving ceremony, congratulating the individual award winners and the organisers for their efforts. He also thanked the sponsors and prize donors, making special mention of Transport Repairs for the use of its facilities and McDonough Contracting for its continued support of the event with traffic management.

Lindsay Stuck from Invercargill won the coveted King Rig trophy ahead of 126 other entrants with the Scania R620 he drives for Freight Haulage in Invercargill. This rig was new at the Gore Truck Show last year, and with just short of 100,000km showing on the odometer, it still looks no different to back then, a true testament to the care afforded to the big Swede. Lindsay has been working for Freight Haulage for 23 years and mostly carts containers on a skeletal B-train.

He brought the truck to Gore the day before the show. It got a little dirty from road grime accumulated along the way and he thanks the guys at Gore Freight and Storage for their efforts at restoring it to pristine show condition after thinking it didn’t stand a chance.

Other prize winners of note were Gerard Daldry with his spectacularly airbrushed Scania 770S taking out the prizes for furthest distance travelled and best paint job. Gerard’s other ProTranz entrant, a Mack Titan, took out the people’s choice gong.

Phil Collinson’s Eden Haulage very narrowly took the best fleet honour, and an extremely well restored 1968 Mercedes-Benz 1418, owned and restored by Tom Roberts from Te Anau, gained popularity with many and won the best Mercedes-Benz prize. Another crowd favourite was a Kenworth T610SAR, entered by Regan Brown from Lockhart Contracting, winning both the best logger class as well as its mileage category.

MCDONOUGH CONTRACTING GORE TRUCK SHOW 2023