22 | REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Southland: Kings Log Transport T T Russell Fredric Trucking ‘monster’ now four entities Kings Log Transport is one of four businesses now operating after the restructure of DT King Transport. T T to page 24 One of Southland’s largest trucking companies, D T King Transport, has undergone major restructuring to now be operating as Kings Log Transport, Kings Rural Transport, Riverton Rural Transport and Kings Mechanical. The four businesses are part of a long and proud family-owned transport legacy in Southland since D T King & Co was established by Dave King in 1938, and subsequently passed through multiple generations. Coal, flax and general goods formed the original company’s main business in its infancy, but Dave King had bigger vision and having already established a general store, he installed petrol pumps and soon began carting livestock. The company’s first loads were delivered by horse and cart, and sometimes by bullock and cart. D T King Transport grew to operate a fleet of 160-plus trucks and was involved in log, bulk, stock and gravel cartage, gravel plants, and fertiliser spreading as well as providing excavation and groundwork services, and also owned a limeworks that has been operating in Western Southland for more than a century. Kings Log Transport director Gordon Harding says D T King Transport was split and sold late last year because the company was becoming very large, especially with the increasing complexity and compliance involved across its various divisions. The owners of each new business, who previously managed them under D T King Transport, are Mike and Taylor Swan, Kings Rural Transport, Andy and Shelley Wills, Riverton Rural Transport, Gordon and Jodi Harding and Grant and Janine Loader who now own Kings Log Transport. The mechanical workshops in the company’s depots around Southland were bought by former workshop manager Craig Ward and his wife Abby with their new business, Kings Mechanical, continuing to service most of Kings’ existing truck fleet. “With D T Kings, the original directors were wanting to step back a bit, and this was the opportunity to break the business up from the monster it was becoming and let the individuals who wanted to, take over each department, make it a bit smaller for them and they could focus on the separate branches of the business,” Gordon says. “There was so much to do with every part of the business; it allows us to focus the individual roles, and the likes of the logging, that’s what Grant and myself focus on now.” Kings Log Transport has trucks based in Invercargill the head branch now where about 50 odd trucks park up each night, Tuatapere and Otautau in Western Southland, Mataura and Gore in Eastern Southland, Balclutha and Milton in South Otago and Dunedin where about 12 trucks are based. It operates 90 trucks and typically transports one million tonnes of logs annually. “When everything is busy and the market is right, we are probably carting 160 loads of logs per day around the Southland and Otago regions and sometime further abroad.” Through its lineage and legacy, Kings Log Transport is Southland’s most experienced company in log cartage and related logistics and can ensure safe and efficient delivery facilitated with a highly specialised fleet and extremely experienced management and staff. Its trucks are fitted with Navman GPS tracking and TrackIT, a real-time fleet-based management and dispatch system that tracks each truck as well as recording driver behaviour and other metrics.
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