When the All Blacks walked off Eden Park with the William Web Ellis trophy in June 1987, who would have thought almost a quarter of a century would pass before we won it again? Likewise, when New Zealand Trucking magazine first hit the shelves in March 1985, who could tell 37 years would go by before a Southern Transport Mack would adorn the cover? In the month that Motor Truck Distributors celebrate its 50th year of operation, we feel incredibly privileged to right that anomaly.

It is understandable that Southern Transport has a special place within the HW Richardson Group. It was, after all, the late Bill Richardson’s first business. However, the truth is that the ‘special’ moniker goes well beyond even that. Southern Transport is a company with a special place in the hearts of the wider trucking industry, community, enthusiast fraternity… in fact, anyone interested in New Zealand trucks and trucking. Southern’s green-and-cream livery is as worthy of the icon title as Road Metals’ brown and white, TD Haulage’s blue, yellow, and red, or Uhlenberg’s orange and green. Like others that have stood the test of time, no matter how many times you see it, Southern’s is a livery that engenders more than mere recognition. Like an Elton John song, those colours have contributed to the backdrop of many lives.

It is, therefore, not overstating it to say it is a privilege to have Southern on the cover for the first time during our tenure as magazine owners. We also wanted to make it that bit more special; October 2022 is the month Motor Truck Distributors (MTD) celebrates 50 years in existence, and therefore its Bulldogs on the roads of Aotearoa. It’s also 35 years to the month since the Southern Transport Mack Super-Liner appeared in a feature as MTD’s 1000th Mack; the October 1987 issue largely dedicated to that milestone.

How fitting is it that Southern Transport’s first Mack Anthem should also be our first contact with Mack’s latest offering?

Fitting the mould

“Keeping vehicles as clean as possible is a passion of mine” is a quote from the late Bill Richardson in his 1999 book Wheels & Deals. It’s a short sentence that encompasses the pragmatic expectation that was a hallmark of the man’s life.

The driver of Southern Transport’s first Mack Anthem, Nick Young, would have done well under Bill. In fact, you could say he goes a little beyond the expectation; a bulk tip truck exposed daily to the joys of quarries, fertiliser stores, aggregate supply yards, and concrete batching plants. Nick’s Anthem took out the King Rig award at the Gore Truck Show in June this year – another first for Southern, incidentally. Based on what we saw over two days in late winter, preparing the truck for the show wouldn’t have taken a hell of a lot. Nick’s a disciple of the little-and-often club, choosing to touch up bits and pieces whenever he has a moment.

There was certainly something special about standing in the company’s yard on 3 Spey Street with vehicle operations manager Roy Agnew on a beautiful winter’s morning, watching Nick ready the latest Bulldog to wear the green and cream.

Even though 92 Otepuni Road was the original domicile for Southern Transport, 3 Spey Street was a custom-built site for Freight Haulage back in the day, so it isn’t without its own sense of history and place in the region.

The Anthem certainly looked the part with a definite aesthetic harmony between the truck’s lines and its TES bulk body and trailer. We’d have to say that this one is the pick of the Anthems we’ve seen to date. There’s no doubt keeping the huge King Bars alloy bumper from dominating the eye will take some doing. The twin stacks with stencilled heat shields, bug deflector, stencilled and backlit bin corners, Alcoa Dura-Bright alloy wheels, plus a little bit of lighting finesse here and there, certainly give this machine a lift.

“It’s probably got a bit more bling than Bill would have put on,” says Dale Cocker, 28-year company veteran and HW Richardson Group general manager of specialised transport. “But who knows? It was a different time back then. Plus, it’s a first.”

Canine to K9

Another entrant into the heavy truck scene whose opening night gala was thwarted by the plague, Anthem even got started on a roadshow in New Zealand with the new Hino 700 series before the second lockdown parked that somewhere near Nelson from recollection. It’s a much-anticipated machine that addresses some of the ties that bound the Bulldog yet leaves others in place.

A non-proprietary safety package ex-factory in the form of Bendix Wingman Fusion second generation, it delivers collision mitigation via automatic emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise, lane departure, lane-keeping support, multi-lane continuation of AEB, and driver awareness. There’s also Bendix Side-Spotter, Mack Stability Advantage, and on this unit, a park-brake door alarm.

It is at times like this in history that having regional assembly also pays off in spades, with Anthem coming here as an 8×4. Obviously, the undercarriage is largely a carry-over from the Granite and 8×4 Trident it replaces – there are still the yucky passenger entry steps – so the work was largely done there. But there’s also that Machiavellian lot in far-off Palmerston North and the fear of ‘If you don’t, then we will’. God bless the turbos!

The things that remain are the 400kW (535hp) power cap and the old Australasian conundrum for the brand that the Super-Liner is an entirely different machine if you’re on the hunt for 600 ponies plus. Luckily, the linehaul era we live in now is geared to nine-axle cab-overs, so that’s less of an issue here than at the billabong, but it is still a limiting factor, nonetheless. In terms of adversarial relationships, it’s New Zealand’s classic Mack versus Kenworth thing all over again, with Anthem and T410 holding stage in the sub-15 litre, 8×4, bonneted US tractor scene currently. Western Star 49X is supposedly coming with eight feet last time we heard, so that’ll add some extra bite to the two-party broth!

Don’t drop the bone

It was General Douglas McArthur who told a wave of new troops entering the Pacific in World War II that they didn’t need to earn his respect; they had it. What they had to ensure was that they didn’t lose it. As classy as it might be, with mod cons no other Mack has, Anthem has enormous boots to fill, which applies as much here at 3 Spey Street as anywhere else. Bill Richardson bought his first Mack in 1974, and although one Mercedes-Benz, in particular, had shown him what diesel engines could deliver in terms of reliability compared with its benzene-burning brethren, he was not a proponent of proprietary drivelines as a rule. Suffice to say, there was a level of apprehension that came with the first Bulldog arrival in the wake of delivery failures on the part of long-time family supplier, International, and then Kenworth.

Hindsight is easy, but he need not have worried one bit because HE7215 fleet No.44, an R685RS packing the legendary 11-litre 237hp motor, reset the bar for truck performance in the fleet. It paved the way for a long line of Macks, and they continue to enter the premises to this day, both at Southern Transport and throughout the wider business.

Fleet No.30 is the first Anthem to find a home in New Zealand, one of a pair bought by HW Richardson Group, the other joining the Allied Bulk business unit in the Bay of Plenty. They are both pre-production models that took part in the Covid-stymied roadshow launch in 2021.

It’s a milestone Mack for company and country, although not the first milestone truck for the company – with first CH, last MH, first Granite, and 1000th Mack all proud notches on the Southern Transport belt. Yes, 3 Spey Street is immensely proud of its place in Richardson history and its long line of Bulldogs. This yard is Bulldog turf, and Southern Transport manager Lionel Wood smiles when he points to the operations office.

“Walk into that office… guys like Rodger Little, who has been here 15 years, and his son Bobby are Mack stalwarts to the core. They’re everywhere here.”

No inch given

Big shoes to fill for No.30 for sure, and we were here to see how the Anthem was measuring up at 74,000km and 11 months old. Using General McArthur’s modus operandi, had the Anthem done itself proud and held the respect?

The first thing we discovered is lineage and mana cut you no slack at Southern Transport. Here was a nine-axle bulky with 12.9 litres of MP8 motor between the rails running the 408km return run to Dunedin and back at 58 tonne HPMV pretty much daily. Putting that into perspective, when dear No.44 hit the tarmac in 1974, her 237hp and 39-tonne GCM translated to 4.5kW (6.1hp), and 31.5Nm (23.2lb/ft) per tonne. Leap ahead 48 years and No.30 at 58 tonne equates to 6.9kW (9.2hp) and 44.9Nm (33.1lb/ft), modest by today’s standards. Yet an interesting story was to unfold.

“It’s a considered thing,” says Dale Cocker. “The terrain up to there [Dunedin] has no real big climbs, just a few pinches, and the rest is rolling or flat. If we needed to push on further out, we would take it to the next level. It’s always a balancing act between capital cost, tare, productivity. Will we achieve more revenue with the bigger truck? There’s plenty of MP8s here working at bigger GCM numbers, and to date, it works out good. We try and quit them at 15,000 to 17,000 hours or 850,000km. That’s about 10 years give or take, although with the supply chain of recent there’s a few out over the million. I’d rather there weren’t, but it’s the times we live in.”

And before you all start, Dale Cocker started in transport at the coalface in Southland, has driven, worked in freight sheds, operations, and management. It’s a silly thing indeed to assume the top end of HW Richardson Group is littered with people who don’t know a Ringfeder from a Roadranger. As we alluded, after two days, his argument was hard to fault in this application in a business of this size.

Nick does the odd day around home, especially in the quieter winter months when the fertiliser demand is less. Today, there’s a fertiliser boat in at Bluff and some local supply yards to top-up, so day one of our two days was around home.

We start with two loads ex-the boat to the Ballance works at Awarua. In 2022, having nine-axle bulk units capable of swallowing 39,780kg at a time certainly keeps the heat on the crane operators portside, especially when you hit the truck rotation sweet spot. Back when Ron Carpenter sold his first Macks, the GCM was less than what Nick’s putting on.

The 33km return run to Awarua from Bluff is better than well known to Richardson trucks through history. It’s flat and with no holdups. Nick cleans up a rotation in a smidge over an hour, with the Anthem not challenged at all.

Next on the to-do list were two loads from the company quarry at Green Hills on Omaui Road, a little south of Awarua on the right.

With magnificent Foveaux vistas from the quarry rim, we were there for loads of dunite rock, an igneous intrusion, according to the geo boffins, which proved to be right. Courtesy of Greg on the loader, 39.7 tonne of it intruded its way into the Anthem’s bins. By all accounts, it’s a CO2 -sequestering rock form if you do the right hocus-pocus to it, too. How lucky can you be in 2022?

There are few things in life better than being in a loaded truck and trailer in the bottom of a quarry, with the good lorry’s snout pointed at the top. Engage the differential locks and let the dog off the leash.

Inside the cab, MP8 has a lovely deep earthy note; it’s a better-sounding truck inside than outside, by a long shot. The 12.9-litre motor hauled the 58-tonne GCM up the steep grades in third and fourth, with Nick keeping the mDRIVE in manual power mode, choosing to run the cutter just to ensure the truck didn’t confuse ambition with ability.

The Anthem, of course, heralded the arrival of mDRIVE with crawlers, and in the Southern machine is the Mack TMD12AD mDRIVE AMT ‘12-speed-and-one’ option, giving 13 total with the crawler at 17:1. There’s also a two- crawler option with a Hillary Step-conquering 19:1 bottom sprocket. Nick says it’s a welcome addition but also notes they’d been experimenting with tyres because at times it’s been the final connection with Mother Earth that’s caused some issues.

“I think we’ve got it sorted now – she’s getting in and out of where she needs to.”

Rear of the transmission is Mack’s 2370B single-reduction bogey at 23,000kg rating and 3.09:1 final, riding on Mack Air- ride eight-bag suspension.

Tipped off at Allied Materials on Bond Street in the city, it was back for more of the intoxicating view and ‘rubble rousing’ at Green Hills. The last mission of the day was loading the on-cart for the early morning run to Dunedin, ex the Southern Aggregates’ sand extraction operation on Pit Road, Oreti Beach.

All done and back at the yard in that post-park-up wind-down that’s such a cool part of trucking, we were subjected to the real test.

“What Mack in history does it most remind you of?” asks Nick.

‘Crikey, now we’re on the spot’, we thought. “Um, aside from the obvious CH cab shell, I’d have to go Vision on account of the bonnet rake?” I reply.

“Oh really?” he says. “I see R-Model in the shape of the guards at certain angles too.” On close inspection and adopting said angle, we could certainly see where that was coming from. Then we realised the more we looked, the more we could see, eventually pondering the possibility that within its unique lines, was Anthem in some way a clever design salute to every model that’s preceded it? And is that saying something deeper?

At that point, our own dear Carl Kirkbeck says, “With the steep, narrowing bonnet and wide guards, I can even see shades of the AC in there!” We always knew Capt. Happy operated in a parallel universe, and that certainly confirmed it.

To the Octagon!

Business is business and to reconfigure an old biblical chestnut, ‘When much is paid, much is expected.’ Harking back to the August issue, even though the list of reasons Leithem and Kirsty Harte cited for throwing voluminous amounts of power at not much GCM were completely justifiable given the nature of their operation, so too is the slightly more conservative and calculated approach of Dale Cocker. Firstly, he’s spending other people’s money in a larger fleet situation, with budgets, targets, and driver satisfaction all to consider. Yet the very thing that made the Harte truck work is identical to what makes the Anthem work, as you’ll see.

As we follow the Anthem up-country from Invercargill, the load’s influence on its progress is only marginally noticeable, as it pulls away from the likes of the roundabout at Edendale. Due to a couple of photo stops, Nick got the jump on us, and it wasn’t until he got into the bigger rolling country on SH93 between Mataura and Clinton that our Corolla quickly reeled him in. The 12.9-litre motor puts up little fight in the top end and basically heads for the climbing gear without delay. However, once there, it has no issue hanging on down around the 1200rpm mark as hills are crested and conquered.

Back out onto SH1 and beyond Balclutha, the rolly-pollys flatten out north of the Lovells Flat area, and the Anthem motors along happily through Milton, Waihola, and the flood-free area.

It’s still well dark when we get to the Allied Concrete plant on the corner of Anzac Ave and Butts Road in Dunedin just over the road from Forsyth Barr Stadium. It’s a gnarly little climb up past the batching plant around and up the hill to the stockpiles. Again, with the diff-locks in, and even with a stop for a gate opening, the Mack heads up with little fretting, and Nick performs the discharge operation effortlessly. It’s fast turn-around stuff.

Par for the daily course is a couple of loads from local quarries back into the plant, keeping everything nicely topped up.

Load one was from the Blackhead Quarries Walton Park operation between Abbotsford and Mosgiel. Knowing it was Abbotsford over the brow of the hill above, I had my fingers crossed everything would stay where it was supposed to, and we didn’t leave with 39.7 tonne of aggregate and a spare bedroom.

Jason is the super friendly site manager at Walton Park and today’s relief loader driver. Nick’s a great ambassador for the Southern brand, and his calm, congenial, and polite persona ensures he gets on well with his customers.

The Anthem’s kitted out with SI-Lodec scales, and the Southern team is meticulous about optimising potential. Transport, as we know, is not the margin king of commerce and over both days, Nick was super vigilant when it came to No.30 carrying all it possibly could prior to departure.

Load two was from what has to be New Zealand’s most picturesque quarry – another Blackhead operation, this time out on the wild south-east coast… on Blackhead Road, as a matter of fact.

We’d been here once before for the October 2015 issue with Ben on the Hilton Haulage Mercedes-Benz Actros. A spur of rock being picked at by man and ocean alike; it makes for the coolest of images.

Dunedin is not an easy place for a truck. If it’s not hills, it’s the labyrinth of roads on the flat that is chocka with traffic. City hills are always the worst because compulsory stops and red traffic lights care not a jot whether it’s 58 tonne of HPMV, or Daihatsu Mira.

The Main South Road from Walton Park comes onto the motorway between Saddle Hill and Lookout Point. Nick powers into the base of the lookout and the mDRIVE swings into action, searching for the cog that’ll see it past the fire station at the top.

“I go into manual here again,” he says. “I’ve been caught out with cars coming into the lane, the adaptive cruise picking them up, and the truck slowing down. Not ideal when you’re this heavy.” The truck settles in at 23kph, seventh gear and 1600rpm.

Peak power of 399kW (535hp) occurs between 1450 and 1900rpm, and maximum torque of 2603Nm (1920lb/ft) rolls in at 1050rpm and bids farewell at 1450rpm. It’s little wonder she’s happy to grind away at 1200rpm if the other inputs are queued up just right.

The Anthem was really at home in the flat, tight, start/ stop stuff of the city. The low terminal speed of the traffic mass allows the rig’s modest output-to-weight stats a hiding place in the crowd. It’s actually an ideal set-up.

Nick just lets the truck do its thing, never trying to push the fact. It’s the perfect style because, as we’ve said, 58 tonne is very different to 45 back in the day. If you start trying to bunt it around through hasty inputs, it’ll bunt back, making for an uncomfortable day, not to mention undue wear on the mechanical carriage.

Back at the plant, it was hoists-up on the TES body and trailer and before we knew it, we were once again available to industry. Owner-manager of Transport Engineering Southland a.k.a. TES, Stephen Keast, has a long association with HW Richardson and supplies body and trailing equipment to many of the business units.

“It’s a case of him knowing us and us knowing him, as well as supporting local,” says Dale. “The latter is huge for us. In saying that, with the size and spread of the company now, supporting local also means Transport and General and Transfleet, too. They’re all very good products.”

Fits and starts

Had we started the day with 700 guns-blazing horsepower, it would have all been for nought once we arrived at Ravensdown in Dunedin for the load home. With the spring season in the throes of lift-off and the tail-end of pre-season plant maintenance going on, there was a bit of a line-up. That meant two and half hours later, we left, such are the challenges of modern-day operations and driving. That delay is close to 20% of the available driving day for a modern truck driver. But the team behind the scenes at Southern manage the potential, sending Nick in after two local loads, not three. We leave with good time to get down to the Ravensdown McNab store just outside of Gore before it shuts, and then on home before the book ran out of time.

“It’s an easy truck, in the sense that it’s all pretty effortless, meaning driving it and working it,” says Nick. “A lot more refined than the Granite I was on previously. Once you know where it fits and how to get it in and out of places, you’re pretty set.”

Nick says the truck has been totally reliable with only a wonky bonnet catch and a ‘finicky’ LED light to see to. Not bad for the first of a new model.

Powering into Dunedin’s Lookout Hill from the standing start at the northern end, the Mack saw 20kph in fifth at 1800rpm briefly, and on the Saddle Hill 37kph in eighth and 1700rpm. In a 13-litre motor at 58 tonne, the Power Leash combination exhaust and engine brake is going to be more a driver aid. It can be connected to cruise to help maintain speed, but its max 315kW (495hp) of hold-back is going to need some big-brother service- brake aid at regular intervals, which being disc from front to rear are right on the money in the Anthem. Again, Nick’s intervention via the middle pedal was barely detectable.

Fuel consumption to date is running at about 1.6kpl. Mark Amer’s Trident back in 2019, running an MP8 at 45 tonnes GCM, was hitting 2.2kpl. A difference for sure, but what stands the Anthem in good stead beyond the GCM difference is load factor. Being a log truck, the Amer unit runs at about 50% load factor, whereas the Anthem is rarely without a payload burden.

A beautiful afternoon indeed to be motoring through the countryside of the lower south. Being an 8×4 adds a level of reassurance to directional control in such high weight deployments. Having a new steering box and springs makes Anthem a leap ahead of its predecessors in that department also. The electric steering assist is only available in the US.

Both driver and passenger get an air seat in the Southern machine, and there was next to nothing in the way of kick from the second steer.

Mack doesn’t seem to have adorned Anthem with any more sound deadening, as the robust note we encountered in Matt Sherlock’s Trident, MutDog, back in May this year was still with us, in the high 70s dB-wise. Thankfully, as we said before, she’s a lovely sounding 13-litre.

Through the undulating country north and south of Balclutha, that ability for the MP8 to hang tough down low allowed the combination to just roll through the hills with minimal fuss until it all flattened out once again on the run into Clinton.

Respect retained!

Because we had a date with destiny at McNab, we stuck to SH1 at Clinton rather than head up SH93. A short discharge visit again, and from there, all roads lead to home.

Making the right truck-buying decisions in 2022 is never easy. Making them in 2022 New Zealand is even harder. Few nations have the choice we do. To say those at the top of Southern Transport have made a few good trucking buying decisions over the years is a bit of an understatement. Southern Transport Fleet No.30 is a well-thought-through machine; a truck bought with other people’s money, people Dale Cocker has the utmost respect for. It’s well capable of the run it’s doing for the tenure in mind. I don’t doubt Dale Cocker for a moment when he says, “If we were pushing it out any further, we’d make the jump.” He’s the kind of person you get down here. If he didn’t mean it, he wouldn’t say it.

But harking back to a chestnut of Bill Richardson and his understanding that without people, you have nothing. Yes, it’s a neat truck doing a job that’s well within its capability. Yes, there’s no question it’s challenged from time to time in the act, but HPMV has in some way taken us back 30 years in the sense that many trucks are again challenged in effecting their daily to-do list.

The key to the Anthem continuing to do what it does for the next nine years with minimal R&M and acceptable fuel consumption is wholly and solely down to Nick Young and the way he drives it.

It’s no different at the other end of the scale. The only reason Leithem and Kirsty Harte’s big-power, low-GCM MAN works is exactly the same – the way Leithem and Nemo drive it. Likewise, Rowdy’s FH16 at TSL. Try thrashing those big boys and see how the R&M, fuel, and tyre bills go.

There’s no doubt that in Nick’s hands, or ones of a similar ilk, the Anthem will quite easily write the next chapter in the proud history of Mack at HWR.