PART 2

Forklifts. When we think of these wonders of 20th century industrial equipment, the first to come to mind would likely be your typical counterbalanced unit zipping around a yard or warehouse moving pallets of goods from point to point. But look up types of forklifts and these plus everything from the simplest pallet jacks to truck- mounted side loaders, and reach stackers to container handlers, is included in the definition.

And, as you’d have read in part 1, Hanes Engineering has specialised in selling, hiring, fixing and moving them all countrywide for decades. Well, maybe not the humble pallet jack, but certainly the motorised types. Today, we’re at the larger end of the scale, shifting the second of three Hyster 48-16CH container handlers for KiwiRail from a rail siding yard in Frankton, Hamilton, to the KiwiRail Southdown terminal on Nielson Street, Onehunga, Auckland.

With any normal truck, this would be a roughly 120km journey straight up SH1, taking about two hours with a clear run. Today, though, we’re carrying about 45 tonnes of machine and grossing out at just over 75 tonne, meaning that once we get to Ararimu Road, Ramarama, we need to zigzag our way along the heavy-haul route, which follows Great South Road through Drury and Auckland’s southern suburbs.

“The Super-Liner picked up all the attachments yesterday. It takes six loads altogether to move the three handlers,” explains Simon Hanes when we meet him, Dave McGrath (dispatcher/operations), and Mack Titan driver Mark Dennis at the Kent Street siding yard at 8am.

This work is all about time – and taking as much of it as you need, whether loading up or threading through morning urban traffic … taking it slow, thinking, checking and double- checking, leaving plenty up your sleeve to deal with issues and get the job done without incident. Though the oversize load can’t hit the road before 9am, the men already have the Hyster positioned and chained to the MTE three-rows-of-eight (and clip-on) Linkwing widening low loader.

With nothing to do but wait, it’s the perfect opportunity to take it all in and learn about the job. To accommodate ‘big yellow’, a fourth-row clip-on is attached, though we’re running without a dolly. “It would look impressive for the photos, but it’s not really needed for this job. This trailer does the job well with the clip-on,” says Simon, adding Hanes runs MTE on the heavy-haul trailers.

The business currently has a fleet of 11 trucks and eight full-time drivers, with Mark’s Titan and [Simon’s son] Carter’s Super-Liner specced for the heavy lifting. We say “Mark’s” and “Carter’s” because Hanes generally follows a ‘one truck, one driver’ policy. “We try to keep it that way if possible. Some of the guys still have the delivery plastic on parts of their cabs!” says Simon.

“They treat the trucks as their own, and I treat it that way, too. But Dave and I will still jump in if needed. We have a couple of small round-town trucks for local deliveries, and even the long-haul drivers will jump in those if they’re hanging around with nothing to do.” “It reminds them where they came from and how good they get it the rest of the week,” Dave says with a laugh.

“Yeah, it’s good to have drivers for whom nothing’s a problem,” Simon continues. “You’ve got to be careful asking them if they can do stuff, though, because they’ll say yes regardless. They could be going to their own wedding and they’ll still say yes!” Considering what we learnt in part 1 of the Hanes Engineering story, we wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn there’s a hint of truth behind that comment.

9am

Like most other sectors, the digger and forklift markets began 2025 in a bit of a lull. “Diggers have crashed lately across the board, not even the little two- or three-tonne ones are moving, and a lot of those that are are just going into storage,” says Simon. Forklifts have slowed down, but are at least still moving, he adds.

“We’ve seen forklifts die down before too, but we’re lucky it’s keeping moving at the moment,” he says, adding that bigger corporate companies haven’t stopped moving forklifts.

“But the cheap brands have slowed right up,” adds Dave. “The good brands are bought by operators who follow replacement cycles. No one who buys cheap is replacing those units.”

“It’s just the way the market goes,” says Simon. “We just have to sit tight and wait till it comes right again.”

With that bit of market insight, the clock strikes nine and we’re into it. Mark’s driven for Hanes fulltime for the past six years and has been on the Titan since new; about 15 months and 100,000km now. We jump in with him straight away for the trip out of Hamilton and partway up the expressway. Simon’s on pilot duties, with Dave playing wingman through Hamilton to help ease progress through the morning traffic.

Immediately, the radios light up and Simon and Dave help clear the way. Approaching our first intersection at Hall Street, Mark stops well back from the intersection and calls the left- turning trucks through. With the pilots holding traffic, he turns right into the right-hand lanes as there’s a traffic island playing obstacle to the combination’s path. Manoeuvre successful, Mark puts the boot into it and climbs the Massey Hall Overbridge, the 510kW (685hp) MP10 lighting up with enthusiastic turbo whistle and the 14-speed mDRIVE sharply ushering in a few more ratios.

We turn right onto Lincoln Street, SH1C, and begin our run north out of Hamilton. It’s a relatively short, direct run from here to the Waikato Expressway, but it’s always interesting to watch pilots work from the cab of a heavy-haul truck. Simon and Dave may have been holding traffic at one of the roundabouts, for example, but that didn’t stop some motorists still entering only to stand on the brakes when they eventually registered the very large Silverado with its ‘Wide Load’ signs blocking their way.

“It’s every man for himself, eh,” says Mark. “People are oblivious. Once you get used to it, though, you just accept it. But dealing with traffic really doesn’t worry me. If you can’t deal with traffic, you shouldn’t be a truck driver. I’ll just sit in the queue and go with the flow. I don’t let that shit stress me.”

No doubt the pilots also develop a feel for what motorists are going to do. Regardless, it’s clear motorists could do a bit better to make the heavy-haul job a little easier.

Reaching the expressway, Dave peels off to the Hanes Horotiu yard and the Titan settles into an easy cruise, Auckland bound. Mark explains it was added to the fleet in replacement of an old T409 Kenworth.

“I liked the Kenworth, it was a good, sound truck. But, it was very old, it was ex-Australia and had already done its life there towing road trains before we got it. In this job, we have to have reliable trucks and be reliable for our customers, but it was getting a little harder to keep the Kenworth going. When Simon asked me what I wanted to replace it with, I actually chose a Volvo …

“I drove our FH700 for a couple of years and I like the way they run; they’re a really well set up truck. But when we started speccing them for this sort of tonnage, it was too expensive. So that got squashed and Simon said, ‘Let’s look at a Mack.’ I grew up on Macks, I’ve driven plenty of them, so that was okay with me.”

With its 11mm thick chassis and 150-tonne GCM, the Titan is well up to the task. Key specs are the aforementioned 16.1L MP10 outputting 3118Nm (2300lb/ft) coupled with the 14-speed Mack mDRIVE AMT with XHD deep reduction gearing, a 7.6-tonne front axle on parabolic springs, and 21-tonne hub-reduction rear axle on Mack Air Ride suspension.

The run up the expressway is about as easy as it comes and the Titan lopes along with us sitting in comfort with an average 73db of noise intrusion in the cab. It’s a smooth, easy ride, the only challenges posed being the Huntly bypass and the Bombays. We’re onboard for the former, and the Titan takes it well in its stride at 55km/h at 1850rpm in ninth, with the mDRIVE offering up smooth, quick, well-timed downshifts.

According to Mark, the heavier the load, the better the drivetrain responds. “Mechanically, I think these will be good to us. It does the heavy stuff really well. The other day I did a load over the Napier-Taupō that was close to 100 tonne and it surprised me. It really gets into it up the hills; does it brilliantly at those weights.”

Mark says the heaviest load he’s moved so far was in the region of 115 tonne. Surprisingly, though, it’s with the lighter payloads that he finds the Titan to be a little less settled. “I find it can keep the revs too low, which I’m not a fan of. I’m a firm believer in keeping it hot in that sweet spot without being hard on the gas. I still can’t get used to that. It just doesn’t react the way I want it to react and driving it in manual is impractical because the mDRIVe’s control panel on the dash is hard to reach when driving.”

Mack’s new-generation dash and instrument layout steps well away from the traditional style of the past. It’s ergonomic (mDrive controls aside) and looks real good when sat at the wheel.

Mark comfortable at the wheel of a truck brand he knows well.

10am

Just over an hour later, we turn off at Ramarama and Mark and Simon make for the heavy-haul route. With the exception of some roadworks at Drury and the need to move off the main road to cross the motorway at Bremner Road, it’s a straightforward but slow run through the southern suburbs.

And man, doesn’t the Titan look good doing it? There’s deceivingly little bling. With the truck featuring in-house painted tanks and guards, the King Bars bullbar, air intakes and stacks are the largest shiny bits, and the big Mack wears the Hanes blue, silver and grey livery smartly.

“I don’t like polishing,” Mark says with a laugh when we later walk around the truck, taking in all the details and in-house- engineered rear guards, centre plates and small stainless additions. Symmetry is the name of the game, with dual square tanks either side of the chassis broken by the AdBlue tank on the left and a covered exhaust cassette on the right. The front tanks hold 1000L of fuel, while the rear right holds the hydraulic fluid and the rear left 440L of water. That water tank is quite nifty, with an outlet between the drive wheels under the rear guards.

“We wanted it all to match, square and painted,” Mark says, before showing off the Hanes- made vertical lockers behind the cab [the talented Greg Belk at work]. An example of very neat, very clever engineering, these are packed with everything Mark would need for the job and to “get out of sticky situations”.

“It’s all there; you’ve got to have it to do the job properly,” says Mark. “I’ve got duplicate tools on both sides so I don’t have to run around or throw tools under the trailer. And it’s all been used. I’m going to Invercargill tomorrow and if we have a blowout or something goes wrong, we can still keep going.”

And it’s here Mark lets us in on another insight into the Hanes culture. “Many other companies don’t stock your toolboxes or allow you to change your own tyres on the road. But blowouts can happen on these trailers at these weights, and there’s the risk you could rip a hose from the brake pot. If it does, I’d rather just attend to it myself and get going again. If I have the pilot to help me, it’s a few minutes and job done – when you’re in the middle of nowhere you need to get into it and get it done.

“But this work is good fun, especially when you get dramas; I like the drama that can come with it. Changing tyres at the side of the road, fitting into spots you shouldn’t be able to … it’s good like that, it adds to the job, makes you think a bit.”

12pm

A little over three hours after leaving Hamilton, Mark rolls into the Southdown terminal, and within minutes, the big Hyster is offloaded and the Titan emerges back onto Nielson Street. With the trailer narrowed up, you really notice its length with the clip-on – 14m of deck space and 18m overall from the fifth wheel to the ramps.

There’s a small pick-up to be made in Highbrook before heading back to Horotiu, and Mark encounters one of those little ‘dramas’, having to back the unit up the drive. “Yeah, the extra length of the trailer makes it a little more difficult to back in. It’s deceiving, but you get used to it,” he says as he ratchets down and measures the load.

“With this sort of work, we get jammed up in places and the trailers take a few knocks. Every couple of years, whoever wants to can put theirs in the sandblasting and paint sheds for a week, to keep the gear looking good.”

With that, we say our thanks and goodbyes, head for home down the Southern Motorway, and are left reflecting on an incredibly insightful morning. Hanes Engineering may be a comparatively small company when it comes to transport, but seven decades of history teaches a lot and entrenches a rich culture its employees are happy to buy into.

There’s no hierarchy or pecking order as such (though were told Dave is affectionately known as The Commander) and the camaraderie within the small team means relationships are built on working together to overcome any challenges and get the job done. Everyone understands the task, thinking it through and taking their time, treating the gear as their own and – most of all – enjoying the ride. As it was seven decades ago, and as it should be today.

Special thanks

We couldn’t thank Chris and Simon Hanes, Dave McGrath and the Hanes crew enough for providing us not one but two extraordinary trucks to feature in this anniversary issue – and, of course, for telling the story of Hanes Engineering and all the lessons encompassed in it. We’ll be back for that podcast!

Thanks to Mark Dennis for your time, story and putting the Titan’s best foot forward. And to Carter Hanes, a pedigreed young operator fortunate to pedal a wonderful machine.

Finally, to Nick Kale at Mack Trucks NZ for the technical detail, and the team at Sime Motors NZ for your highly valued continual support of our publication.

SPECIFICATIONS
Mack Titan CXXT 6×4 685 40in Mid-Rise Sleeper