With its latest Mack Trident, New Zealand-based company Road Metals is continuing a long line of Macks that dates back 50 years to their first R-Model.

Road Metals has been running Macks since it bought its first one in 1974. Now, an R-Model, MC and CH all take pride of place in the company’s museum, but their descendant Tridents, Super-Liners and Metro-Liners are a familiar site on the roads of the South Island, from Nelson to Invercargill.

COO Dan Francis is the third generation to work in the family business. established in 1955 by his grandfather Stan, Road Metals has grown steadily ever since. The 15-year-old Dan started on a front-end loader, moved into the crushing plants, then to driving trucks and made it into head office 16 years ago.

When he started running the fleet it had seven trucks. Now it has 98.

“Most of the fleet are Macks and Volvos configured as 6×4 tippers with four or five-axle trailers. ”And when we moved into Kiwi Concrete, we started buying Metro-liners as concrete agitators.”

The company’s 40 Macks are kept busy hauling sand and aggregate from quarries to building sites and towing mobile crushers to locations all over the island.

“We’ve got a pretty broad reach,” said Dan, “probably bigger than any of the competition, and we work on any job that needs these materials, whether it’s roads, house foundations or wind farms.

“A lot of our jobs are only 20km- or 30km trips to and from the quarries, but we also haul contaminated materials and that can be a 300km journey.”

Dan said Macks have served the company well for 50 years and the latest models are particularly popular with the drivers.

“Each driver has his own truck, and they get to name them, so they get pretty attached to them.

“When we first started getting the models with the mDRIVE automatic transmission we had a few old fellas who swore they’d never drive one. I said, ‘Give it a go and if you don’t like it we’ll get you a manual’. And you know what? We haven’t been able to get them off those trucks ever since. They love the transmission, and they all love the look of the Macks.”

As a fleet manager, Dan said knows the importance of keeping his drivers happy, but he also understands the importance of reliability.

“We keep these trucks for a long time, probably way too long. But they’ve proven themselves to be reliable year after year. We’re starting to sell some of our 2011 models, but some of our Macks are 20 years old and still going.”

The company has a mix of servicing models, running their own workshop at Oamaru in Otago, but using the Mack dealership for most of the fleet in Christchurch.

“The Mack support network is very good, and our approach to servicing is one reason we can keep these trucks going so long,” said Dan.

After a relatively quiet few years, Dan is anticipating that business will start to increase in the coming years.

“New Zealand is way behind in terms of infrastructure,” he said, “so there’s no shortage of opportunities out there.

“If anyone wants to build something, we’ll be there to deliver the materials.”