In the past two months, the New Zealand Trucking Media team has attended two industry events that have reinforced all that is positive about the Kiwi trucking industry. As you may have read last month, the first of these was Southpac’s 100 Years of Kenworth event – a once-in-a-century celebration of the grandest style. The other was the Teletrac Navman Technology Maintenance and Safety Conference and Exhibition, held in mid-March jointly by the New Zealand Trucking Association and National Road Carriers Association.

The associations made a lot of hype about the TMS Conference and Exhibition in the months leading up to the event. It was promised to be a new concept, and kudos must go to the organising teams for giving it a lash – sometimes new thinking around old ideas is just what’s needed. To paraphrase Dave McCoid’s EDM editorial, written the week of the event, it was a superb example of collaboration within the industry, a great manifestation of harmonised visions, and I look forward to seeing how TMS evolves in the years to come.

We’ll bring you a full event recap in coming issues. We’d have never been able to do it justice in the lead-up to this issue, but I wanted to take the opportunity to single out two aspects of the two days that really stood out to me. The first was the opening two hours of the show, designed for kids from local schools who are at the stage of life where they ought to be thinking about future career directions. Some 130 Christchurch students descended upon the Te Pae Convention Centre for the Careers Transport Expo, chatting to exhibitors and learning about different paths they could follow for a future career in transport. Sure, some left with pockets of free stuff – kids will be kids – but others left with cogs turning, set in motion by the conversations they’d had with exhibitors and delegates. You can always spot kids with a genuine interest in something.

Better still, NZT will follow this up with its Careers Trucking Transport School, a five-day programme during the July school holidays that will grant students hands-on access to branches of the industry. Maybe, one day when they look back on their careers in transport, a morning at TMS 2024 will be the catalyst they remember. You just never know when you’ll inspire a young mind.

And from inquiring young minds to wise old heads, the second aspect that stood out to me was the Operator’s View Across the Industry Sectors session. Chaired by NRC CEO Justin Tighe- Umbers and featuring Newey Transport’s Ian Newey (logging), Normans’ Adam Norman (family-owned provincial carrier), ORT’s Don Wilson (livestock) and South Island Port User Group’s Grant Lowe (ports), the panel shared their journeys, experiences, learnings and wisdom gained from years at the sharp end of running successful operations and, in Grant’s case, working groups with industry, ports and associations.

Most often at conferences, those at the coalface are fed speeches and presentations by outside experts. Yes, conversations happen within the industry all the time, but what was refreshing about this session at a conference level was the reminder there’s so much the industry still can learn from itself.

The team at Long Haul Publications is excited to announce that New Zealand Trucking magazine editor Gavin Myers has bought an ownership stake in the company. Given Gavin’s commitment and enthusiasm for the business and its various media arms since he joined the company in 2019, Margaret Murphy and I are delighted to have him alongside us as Long Haul Publications enters a new chapter in its story – Dave McCoid.