86 | nzdairy RURAL SERVICES » Cranleigh Haulage Reece sold on trucking and on Macks Hugh de Lacy Reece Johnson was keen to elbow his way into the South Otago trucking business, but he knew he’d have to offer potential farmer customers something new and different to get his brand, Cranleigh Haulage, established. So Reece set off on a path that has added pasture improvement to his trucking service, in the form of Highland Nutrition, which grew from an idea germinated while he was driving a silage truck in the American Mid-West in 2005. His father and an uncle were in the trucking industry when he was growing up, and from the moment that, as a six-year-old, Reece climbed into the cab of a new Mack they’d just bought, he was sold on trucking - and on Macks. Today Cranleigh Haulage runs ten trucks, most of them Macks – “They’re very cost-effective to service and repair,” Reece says - along with a couple of loaders, and services mostly farmer clients throughout the lower South Island, with some work taking them the length of the country. After doing his time in the local Honda shop as a motorbike mechanic, and following it up with truck-driving OE in Western Australia and the USA, Reece got his start as a transport operator in 2012 when Otago’s Dyne’s Transport subcontracted a Fonterra milk-run to him. Within a year he had a second truck, and in 2014 he took over the Kaitangata company Nyhon Transport, but the desire to offer something additional to his farmer clients persisted. “Highland Nutrition came about after witnessing some massive corn crops in the States, and me, coming from a farming and cropping background, asking a few questions and getting some very interesting answers,” Reece says. A crucial meeting he had was with fertiliser expert Merv Solly of Nelson, who had scientifically proven the fertiliser value of dolomite, Cranleigh Haulage runs ten trucks, most of them Macks. a rock similar to limestone containing the minerals calcium and magnesium carbonate. So Reece took up an offer from Merv to be a distributor for the latter’s Golden Bay Dolomite company. More importantly, Merv told Reece about an American soil fertility system that he used on his own farms and offered to his Golden Bay Dolomite customers. The upshot was that Highland Nutrition now offers farmers increased production by testing their soil and herbage – even human and animal hair – as the basis for a specialised fertiliser programme. Cranleigh Transport is, of course, available to transport the nutrients to the client farm, but Highland Nutrition leaves it up to the farmers to decide which company they buy their fertilisers from. “That’s the farmers’ choice, and we leave it up to them,” Reece says. With farmers under increasing government pressure to reduce the run-off of fertiliser and animal waste into waterways, Highland Nutrition’s testing, and subsequent designing of specialised application programmes has been a hit. “The work I’ve done with Highland Nutrition has shown that pasture can be grown without the high dependence on synthetic nutrients, thus helping lower nutrient levels in waterways,“ Reece says. And Cranleigh Transport has grown steadily as a result. Registered drinking water carrier with the Ministry of Health Phone Shane 0274 901397 Supplying water to the Dairy Industry for the past 20 years STEWART STREETBALCLUTHA Fert Wholesale Direct Ltd Farmers, are you concerned about improving your fertiliser efficiency and environmental footprint? Then Fert Wholesale Direct Ltd can help, as we have helped Gladvale Farms Ltd The ONE System which through independent trials shows a doubling of response to N. And more recently, our Revolutionary Compound Urea/SOA product where every granule contains both forms of N. Contact Shane Harold on 021 0235 6491 or shane@fertwholesale.co.nz
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